Phishers are getting smarter every day. I’ve had two messages to my hotmail recently that were really clever. One was supposedly an ABC News item, and was actually a news story copied from ABC News, but the unsubscribe link went to some dodgy web address. Although you had to mouse over the link and see the actual address of the link. Today I got a message that purported to be some legal settlement information about Google AdWords.
If I could deliver one message to every Net user it would be this: never trust anything not written personally by someone you know. Be suspicious; avoid clicking any external link from an untrusted message. Verify the address before you click (the lower left of your browser will reveal the address of the link before you click it). To any site requiring a login, type the address yourself – especially Ebay, Paypal, your bank, or any place you store sensitive information. Even places that don’t store sensitive info – myspace, google, etc. I’m beginning to wonder if the major industry of former Eastern Bloc nations isn’t Internet scams. That seems to be where a lot of this stuff originates.