When you receive an email with an odd looking link and a strange explanation or no explanation from your friend like the one below don't open it. It was probably not sent by your friend. Don't worry about the link below - I castrated it.vector.h: Yikes - evil macro hell!
How do the bad guys get into your friends account? Sometimes the friend uses a simple word password. This makes it easy for a computer program to guess the password, then send out the marketing spam or virus out to everyone in your friends address book.
If you use a public computer and fail to logout of your email account then the next person on the computer can send junk out to everyone in your address book.
And a program on the public computer can capture your account and password. Best not to use a public computer, or if you must, change your password as soon as you get back to your own computer.
Some email systems are better than other ones. I like gmail - google has better safeguards then some other systems.
If someone does capture your email change your password immediately. And make it a little more complex. If your current password is coolstud change it to coolstud12#C@. Very unlikely that any computer program could find that one.
It is also a good idea that if you email to a large number of people that you send the message bcc. You can address the message to an "Undisclosed List" <Yourownemail@gmail.com>, with all others sent bcc. That is the way we send emails to our Morgan Park alumni.
That way if one of your addresses gets compromised then the bad guys can't send crap to all of the other people. Or if your friends email account gets compromised they cannot send crap out to all your email friends.
One of the favorite scams is to capture your email address, then create a similar looking email account with one digit difference. Then they send an email to all of your friends that is one digit off of your email address asking for money. If your friend falls for the trick then they respond to the new fake email.
Most of these scams / viruses are not too dangerous. Use different passwords for different accounts and make them a little more complex.
Don't get too worried about all this. The bad guys are not too bright and they will work on others that are not as street wise as a Morgan Parker.
Click to Read More:
http://www.docusign.com/blog/protect-yourself-online-fraud-and-scams-new-year
http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/scamsandidentitytheft/ss/top10inetscams.htm
http://www.onguardonline.gov/articles/0002-common-online-scams
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