Face forward - even if not moving forward

A providential and interesting follow-up to my previous post...

I was over at a friend's apartment yesterday to move around her computer and furniture. She asked me about a couple of things that came up recently on her internet and in her mailbox. I fixed the internet thing but this was a very interesting notice in her e-mails:



What is very interesting is that this elderly lady's first question to me was, “What's PayPal?” My “scam antennae” shot up right away! She had been the victim of a hoax virus e-card last year and it took me 2 days to root out all the spyware & trojans (I couldn't simply reformat the hard drive since she didn't have reinstallation software). Thankfully, she now asks me about anything that looks suspicious—like this. I was actually excited to see this in light of Lovinmalamutes' daughter's trouble with PayPal.

First thing to note with this phishing e-mail scam is this: the notice is too plain. Secondly, there is no copyright information about PayPal. Thirdly, the request is to log onto PayPal – once your login information is given away via a false front, you're done! The thieves have full access to personal and banking or credit card information—and they harvest this information in less than 5 minutes. But let's look at something else:



Right-clicking on the sender's e-mail and selecting 'Properties' reveals the fact that whoever sent it is not associated with PayPal at all! I did a quick Google search and found out that “tools.ca” is a domain for an accounting software firm, not having anything to do with PayPal. I didn't even want to click the link in the e-mail to see where it went or if it might install spyware on her computer. After taking these screen captures, it was promptly deleted. It's worth mentioning here again, that if anyone receives a notice like this from PayPal, Ebay, or their banking institution, promptly call that company and ask their customer service department if a notice was sent (any type of security update or validation should be done directly over the phone or in person). If not, they will ask you to send it to their fraud department.

The threat is real...be careful out there.

E-mauling: the new way of getting under your skin (the term is not new, this is just the context of how today's post came about).

A blanket e-mail is sent to you from some co-worker within the company who has no bearing upon your job at all. Something like, “I’m Bill Canuski in paper clip design and will be on vacation for the next two weeks. If there’s any concerns or emergencies while I’m away, please contact my assistant, John Van Huesel.” But it’s not only sent to you, its sent to everyone - all 400 employees who have a company e-mail! This person should take the time to make a list of those who are directly responsible to him or those he is directly responsible to and focus the notice to just those people. I'm sure about 398 people clicked that notice to the trash.

Its even worse when this seems to be done primarily as a means to justify someone’s existence within the company. I remember a senior executive at a company I used to work for. Almost daily he would forward a clip moaning and groaning about the state of the industry. There never was a note of encouragement nor was there any company directive that had his name attached to it. Why was he there? It doesn't matter now because the company is bankrupt and the machines are gone to Mexico...