Thursday, August 06, 2009

A warning to all you people out there in blog-reader land : Phishers want your personal information, and they are quite sneaky. I just got an email from "UPS PARCEL SERVICE" at an email that was NOT from ups.com. It promised me that my lottery package from the UK was merely waiting for me to call a number and give them my personal info and they would send it right along to me.

Yeah, right.

Another hint - it was sent to 'undisclosed recipients', which means it was sent to a LOT of people all at once. Spam, in other words.

My rule of thumb is this : I never click or call or in any way contact anyone from information in an email from someone I do not know.

If I want to check something online, I enter the URL myself, or use a bookmark I had already, I don't trust any email for that.

And even on the phone, when a bank or credit company calls me wanting me to verify information, I hang up and if I'm concerned I'll call the bank or credit company myself, using the number on the bank statement or on the back of the card. Cold calls from people claiming to be your bank but wanting you to verify information they should have - very hinky.