It is rare for more than a few days to go by without my receiving a call from a friend, client, or a reader asking about some strange email they have received. Almost every time someone asks me what they should do, my answer is to inquire “Does your computer not have a [Delete] key?”
Invariably these dubious emails come from cyber-crooks who are fishing for anyone dumb enough to click on a link in their email. The practice is called “phishing” for marks. Online cyber-crime is a growth industry; witness the fact that there is now at least one group of good guys dedicated to trying to keep track of all the different online email scams.
The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) sort of keeps track of this. Their web site antiphishing.org makes interesting reading if you want to keep up with all the latest scams, which because there are so many I will never try to do. The data collected by APWG seems to indicate that in a six-month period during 2014 that there were at least 123,972 unique phishing campaigns identified. That is fewer than a thousand a day, but still too many for me to keep up with.
Something I found to be absolutely incredible about these scams is their duration. The average time the crooks run one of their scams is only a day! This means that long before you could file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau or write a letter to your member of Congress, the crooks would have already closed up shop, covered their tracks, and disappeared into the dark ether of cyberspace.
Most of these scams make use of fake web sites such as amaz0n.com (with a zero) and spelled out in capital letters AMAZ0N in order to fool less-observant users. Thousands of such scam sites are registered and then disappear each year.
Victims who are so gullible as to give the crooks their credit card number can expect to be charged hundreds of dollars for services any reputable computer technician could provide for a fraction of the cost. Sometimes after paying hundreds of dollars you may be told your problem is the fault of your Internet Service Provider (Megacable or Telmex) and fixing that problem is not covered.
You could call your credit card company to dispute the charge, and most banks will immediately void the transaction. That will not stop the crooks from phoning you with threats of suing you for violating your contract though.
What can you do about this? Be suspicious of everything. Make liberal use of your [Delete] key every time you receive any suspicious email. If you receive a phone call, just hang up. You cannot reason with these scam artists; their only goal is to cheat you out of your money.
Be extremely cautious about opening files that come to you attached to emails. Finally, regular readers of this column have read this before: Never, never, never, never, never, never, ever click on links in emails, especially from people you trust. Almost 100% of my clients who were victims of a scam were had because they clicked on a link in an email that was (allegedly) from someone they trusted.
Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant with more than 20 years IT experience and a Texan with a lifetime love for Mexico. The opinions expressed are his own. He may be contacted through his web site at SMAguru.com.