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Despite all the tools we and our ISP’s have to fight spam, it’s still continues to be a huge problem. Millioms of spam emails are sent every day, hawking everything from black market pharmacuticals to porn sites. According to Kapersky Labs, even if there is only a 5% response, the spammers have made a huge profit. Aside from hogging bandwith and the general annoyance factor, spam also spreads spyware and malware such as trojan horses-and that’s not all. These days spammers have gone beyond out inboxes to the web itself, putting up thousands of websites, some nothing more than what are called “link farms”, (a page of nothing but links) splogs(fake blogs who’s sole purpose is to exploit Google’s Adsense program)or plastered with banner ads. Other spammers are more sinister and put up pages that look innocent and legit but have embedded codes that can do everything from plaster your desktop with ads and icons to stealing your passwords and credit card info. These types of pages are frequently used in what is called “phishing”. The scammer puts together a page that looks like it is from a legit source such as eBay, Paypal, or your bank and emals it to you. It usually contains a dire warning that your account has been compromised and you need to verify your info or risk suspension. These fake sites look very very convincing, but there are three easy ways to figure out if they are real or not. The first one is quite basic. Most companies will never ask you to provide personal info via email. Second, any email you get from a company you have an account with will almost always be address to you by name. Third, simply put your mouse pointer over the link and look at the bar at the bottom. It will display the real address and 99 times out of 100 it will be a scam site, not the legit one.

So how do you protect yourself? Here are a few tips:

Never open attachments from someone you don’t know., If someone you do know sends you an attachment that ends in .exe or .pif, contact them before opening as they could be infected with a virus. Only after they verify it’s a legit attachment should you open it.

Be wary of links in emails Again, if you don’t know who sent it, don’t click. For emails from sites you have an account on warning you of suspicious activity or pending suspension, remember what we discussed above. Never log in via a link in email, go to the site directly and log in there.

For shopping and news sites that require registration, consider a “throw away address” Since these types of sites often sign you up for all kinds of newsletters and “special offers” don’t use your primary email address. Sign up for a free Yahoo!, GMail, or Hotmail address and use that instead, as they can easily be abandoned if overrun by spam.

Update, update, update! Keep all anti-virus and anti-spyware software updated.

Use your head! If something doesn’t sound or look right, avoid it, and if it sounds too good to be true, it is!

computers, antivirus software, spam, phishing, protecting yourself from cybercriminals, spyware

*cartoon courtesy of ensmp.net*