Spam mail - Email sent to you from unsolicited sources, often trying to get you to buy something, tricking you into running attached exes or asking for you bank details.
Phishing Scam - The term given to Spam mail that appears to come from a valid source (i.e. ebay or the bank you do business with) asking you to visit their site to re-validate your bank details. However the site may appear genuine but is infact a fake site and by inputting your bank details you may well end up haning thousands of pounds/dollars withdrawn from your bank account.
419 Scam - This particular scam originated in Nigeria and is so named due to a section in Nigerian law that covers "the Advance Fee Fraud and Other Fraud Related Offences Act of 1995". The Emails tend to go something like this (pick your words, I'm sure you have had at least one): [I am writting to you as I am the son/wife/father/brother/sister of "insert name here", who was recently killed/has been wrongfully imprisoned/has had to flee the country. He/She was a high ranking official with lots of power and wealth. However the authorities will soon gain the $1,000,000 dollars in his/her bank account, so I would like to transfer the money to your bank account so that the authorities cannot get it and in return you can have a share of the money. All I need is your bank account details and proof of identiy.....]...Of course what you end up with is no money going into your bank account and infact all the money in there being taken out and you are left with huge overdraft bills... ( Has The 419 Scam been Busted?)
Spoofing - The term given to the flaw in the email open relay system that most isp's use. It basically allows emails to comre from anyone to anyone, neither of which may exist. I.E. I occasionally get spoofed Spam emails from myself, which means the from address is mine and the to address is also mine. However my PC is so locked down and nothing gets in or out of my PC without me letting it, also each email contains information on the route it took to get to my PC and none of the emails follow anything like the route that a genuine email from myself to myself would follow.
HOW TO SPOT SPAM MAIL
The email subject may have a series of random numbers and letters at the end of it.
It may have your username to ebay or other online system in the subject but doesn't actually come from ebay or another online system you use, or it may be your email address in the subject.
It may have one of these common terms in the subject:
"Maybe I found that"
"How was your vacation"
It is not relating to a subject you know about or have requested.
THE DO'S AND DONT'S OF SPAM MAIL
DO - If your email program is capable of only showing all emails in text only format...DO SO (explained why in WHAT SPAM DOES BELOW).
DO - If you email program is capable of showing you the source code of the email itself (i.e. what you see displayed to you is not the entire contents of the email, explained why in WHAT SPAM DOES BELOW), check the actual locations of the links in emails before you click them (i.e. a link that states http://ebay.com may infact be http://ebay.com%20%20%20%20%20%20%20@http://192.168.0.1. The %20 is a url encoding term for a space, this means that the http://192.168.0.1 (an example) will not appear in the url of your browser as its pushed off to the side, however it will infact be the location your browser takes you to.
DO - Note the date that the email was sent (not received) if it was several days in the future then chances are its spam (there appears to be a spam server somewhere with the date wrong, which obviously sits there sending emails 24/7 and roughly does a loop moving onto the next subject matter every 30-40 minutes).
DO - GET A VIRUS PROTECTION PROGRAM (GET TWO IF YOU WANT) AND KEEP IT UP TO DATE. If you run Windows, USE WINDOWS UPDATE and keep your PC protected from security holes. GET YOURSELF A FIREWALL, in one month of running my firewall, it had blocked over 7,000 attacks to my PC from PC's all over the internet, nearly 4,000 of them were considdered to be high risk (i.e. getting details of who is logged onto the PC, security details of the PC, attempts to log onto the PC (i.e. it is possible to remotely log onto PC's as if its sitting in front of you, and easily scan any file on the PC without you knowing about it). GET YOURSELF A SPAM FILTER (DONT EVER EVER EVER GET A SPAM FILTER PROGRAM THAT YOU ARE INFORMED OF VIA SPAM MAIL....ITS NOT A SPAM FILTER, IT WILL BE A TROJAN)...I use Spam inspector and have over 2,000 email domains blocked which filters out 95% of all spam mails.
DONT - Read your emails in HTML view.
DONT - Open zip or run exes or any other attachment that you are not expecting or is not something you know to be something you deal with.
DONT - Reply to spam mails or forward them on to anyone else.
DONT - Be fooled.
DONT - Click links in emails without actually looking at the source code of the email to see where its really going to take you.
WHAT SPAM DOES BELOW
Email Trakers - That is to say the email itself is not tracked as that is not possible, however contents of the email can contact servers which do track you. This only happens when you view emails in HTML view, and works like so: A nice pretty pictured email may show you pictures, however those pictures may not be in the email itself, but located on a server somewhere. So html code allows images to be "dragged" from other locations and shown as if they are part of the email. I.E. <img src="http://spamserver.com/image1.jpg"> , this is quite lagitimate, however something like this is not <img src="http://spamserver.com/image1.jpg?TBDFGUWOIGUYWWTYU7G6T7E3HIHIHi87DF">, the characters after the question mark are your email address encoded into either base 64 or a HASH (a form of encrypting) which when the image requested is called by the email, it basically says to the server "this email address is live...send it more spam".
Trojans/Viruses - Although emails themselves cannot currently contain viruses that run by simply getting the email, they can however contain viruses downloaded from servers if viewed in HTML format. Also many Spam emails contain attachments which when run will scan your PC from credit card details and/or email addresses or indeed postal addresses of anyone on your PC.
Spoofing - The majority of Spam emails do not come from where they say the come, they are either made up names or are names and addresses of people that have had their email addresses harvested.... So that email from microsoft with the attachment saying it will patch holes in your PC,it won't it will scam you as microsoft never send out email attachements unless requested.....And that email from the FBI saying that you will soon be arrested for illegal MP3 downloads, your not, the FBI would never give you prior wrning as to what they are going to do.
COMMON SPAM FACTS
The biggest threat to your computer and your inbox is "YOUR FRIENDS" or infact any associate that has your email address. It has been shown that the most common cause of spam mails starting are that your friends have downloaded a virus or trojan onto their PC's which scans their address books or any file on their PC looking for email addresses and either starts sending spam mails out directly (trojans don't need access to your email clients to send emails) or send all of the email addresses it finds to a central server which then sends out spam mail to you spoofed from one of the other email addresses found on their PC.
Most Spam mail relies upon one thing, you being gullable/greedy/confused. Dont fall for offers that sound too got to be true...as chances are they are not and you end up with either a dead computer or no money.
It is not Microsofts or the Governments responsibility to stop spam, its YOURS.
Spam mail is now considdered to be not the work of the odd person wanting to cause havok to the internet or to expose flaws in systems, but it is now the work of organised crime syndicates, and is specifically targeted at parting you from your money.
BANKS and EBAY - never request you to re-validate your credit card details because of their new security systems. (I personally don't have a credit card so its very obvious that they are Fraudulant emails.
