A SAMPLE OF EMAIL SCAM

Dear Winner
We are Pleased to inform you that you have won a prize money of (£500,000.00 GBP) by Google /Rediffmail Lottery inconjunction with the GOOGLE GMAIL CORPORATION. we collects all the email addresses of the people that are active online, Among the millions that subscribed to Yahoo, Hotmail and various Microsoft window users, we only select thirteen people every year as our winners,we are congratulating you for being one of the people selected. All participant were selected through a computer balloting system drawn from Nine hundred thousand E-mail addresses from Canada, Australia, United States, Asia, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Oceania as part of our international promotions program which is conducted annually.
This Lottery was promoted and sponsored by Google Corporation and a conglomorate of rediffmail and some multinational companies as part of their social responsibility to the citizens in the commmunities where they have operational base


Winning ( G/4879LEV7)
How ever you will have to fill and submit this form to the events manager

1. Full name..............

2. Contact Address........

3. Age....................

4. Telephone Number.......

5. Marital Status.........

6. Sex....................

7. Occupation.............

8.State:................

9.Country................
(Contact Director Lottery Department})

Name: Mr Cox Rooney

Email: claims12@live.co.uk

Tell +447017515412

Director Lottery Department

The Google Rediffmail Corporation

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What to Do When Your Email Account is Hacked?

How to Recover Hacked Email Accounts?

It can be a real nightmare if someone hacks and takes control of your email account as it may contain confidential information like bank logins, credit card details and other sensitive data. If you are one such Internet user whose email account has been compromised, then this post will surely help you out. In this post you will find the possible ways and procedures to get back your hacked email account.

For Gmail:

It can be a big disaster if your Gmail account has been compromised as it may be associated with several services like Blogger, Analytics, Adwords, Adsense, Orkut etc. Losing access to your Gmail account means losing access to all the services associated it with too. Here is a list of possible recovery actions that you can try.

Step -1: Try resetting your password since it is the easiest way to get your account back in action. In this process Google may ask you to answer the secret question or may send the password reset details to the secondary email address associated with your compromised account. You can reset you password from the following link

Gmail Password Reset Link

If you cannot find success from the Step-1 then proceed to Step-2.

Step-2: Many times the hacker will change the secret question and secondary email address right after the account is compromised. This is the reason for the Password Reset process to fail. If this is the case then you need to contact the Gmail support team by filling out the account recovery form. This form will ask you to fill out several questions like

1. Email addresses of up to five frequently emailed contacts
2. Names of any 4 Labels that you may have created in your account
3. List of other services associated with your compromised account
4. Your last successful login date
5. Account created date
6. Last password that you remember and many more…

You need to fill out this form as much accurately as possible. It is obvious to forget the dates of last login, account creation and similar terms. However you need to figure out the closest possible date/answers and fill out this form. This is your last chance! The more accurate the information filled out in the recovery form, the more the chances of getting your account back. You may reach the account recovery page form the following link

Account Recovery Form

For Yahoo and Hotmail:

Unfortunately for Yahoo/Hotmail there is no second option like filling out the form or contacting the support team. All you need to do is either answer the secret questions that you have setup or reset the password using the secondary email option. 

To initiate the password reset process just click on the Forgot password link in your login page and proceed as per the screen instructions.

I hope this post will help you recover the lost account. I highly recommend that you also read my post on How to protect your email account from being hacked and Tips to find unauthorized activity on your Gmail account so that you always stay protected!

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Benefits of Using BCC While Sending an Email

Almost every user on the Internet sends/receives hundreds of emails per day. However only a handful of them know what is BCC and what are the advantages of using BCC while sending an email. If you are one such Internet user who is unaware of BCC then this is the post that you should definitely read!

 

What is BCC?

 

BCC stands Blind Carbon Copy. It refers to the practice of sending an email to multiple recipients without disclosing the individual emails addresses. While sending the same email/message to multiple recipients, it is a common practice for most users to separate the email addresses by using comma or semi-colon and insert all those addresses in theTo: filed. When emails are sent in this way, each receiver is able to see the complete list of recipient email addresses to which the same message if being sent to. Unlike To:, theBCC: option allows you to hide the recipients in email messages. In other words, when emails are sent using BCC:,  the receiver will not be able to see the list of recipient email addresses. Thus using BCC is a smart way to protect the privacy of the recipients.

 

Why should you use BCC?

 

Here are the reasons for using BCC:

Privacy – BCC provides an easy and simple option for protecting the privacy of your recipients. Under many circumstances it is necessary for us send an email without letting the recipients know who else is receiving the same message. Also it is highly recommended that you use the BCC: while forwarding a joke or a funny email to a list of your friends.  If you are sending email on behalf of a business or organization, it may be especially important to keep lists of clients, members, or associates confidential. So don’t forget to use BCC: in instances wherever privacy matters.

Respect for you recipients- While forwarding email messages, people often do not bother to remove the list of previous recipients.  As a result, messages that are repeatedly sent to many recipients may contain long lists of email addresses.  This makes it easy for the spammers to collect and target those emails for spamming.

In order to avoid the risk of spammers, it is necessary that you encourage people/friends to use BCC: while forwarding any message to you. This prevents your email address from appearing in other people’s inboxes thereby keeping yourself less exposed to spammers. You may also refer How to Protect an Email Account from SPAM for more information on spamming.

 

How to BCC an email message?

 

Most email clients provide the BCC: option under a few lines below the To: field. All you have to do is just enter the list of recipients in the BCC: field instead of entering in the To:field. You may enter only your own email address in the To: field. Once you do this just hit the Send button.

The moral is that you should use BCC: while sending bulk messages so as to protect the privacy of your recipients.

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How to Block Unwanted Emails

Do you want to  block emails from your ex wife/husband? Do you want to block those annoying offers and newsletters that reach your inbox? Well here is a way to block all those unwanted and annoying emails that you do not want to see or read! With this trick you can block individual email address or the whole domain from which you do not want the emails to come from. Here are the step-by-step instructions to do this.

 

For Gmail

 

1. Login to your account

2. At the top-right corner, click on Settings

3. Under Settings, click on Filters

4. You’ll now see an option “Create a new filter“, click on it

5. Now in the From field enter the email address from which you do not want to receive the emails

For ex. you may enter john@gmail .com in the From field to block all incoming emails from this address. However if you want to block the whole domain then use the following syntax:*@xyz.com. Now all the incoming emails from the domain xyz.com will be blocked.

6. Click on Next Step, select the action you’d like to take on the blocked emails. You may select the option Delete it so that the blocked email is moved to trash. To unblock the email, all you need to do is just delete the filter that you’ve created.

 

For Yahoo

 

1. Login to your account

2. At the top-right corner, click on Options

3. A drop down menu appears, now click on More options

4. In the left panel select the option Filters and click on create or edit filters

5. Now click on Add

6. In the next screen, give a name to your filter and in the From header field enter the email address that you want to block.

Fox ex. john@gmail.com or if you want to block an entire domain then just enter @xyz.com. Dont enter *@xyz.com. Select the option Move the message to: Trash and click on Save Changes.

 

For Hotmail

 

1. Login to your account

2. At the top-right corner, click on Options

3. A drop down menu appears, now click on More options

4. Click on Safe and blocked senders link under Junk e-mail

5. Now click on Blocked senders

6. Type in the email address that you want to block under blocked e-mail address or domain field.

For ex. Enter john@yahoo.com to block the individual email address or just enter xyz.com to block the entire domain.

That’s it. You no longer receive those annoying emails in your inbox. Keep your inbox clean and tidy. I hope this post helps. pass your comments!

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How to Protect an Email Account from SPAM

Most of us get SPAM every day. Some of us get more and some little. Even a newly created email account will begin to receive spam just after a few days of it’s creation. Many times we wonder where these spam come from and why? But this question remains unanswered within ourselves. So in this post I will try my best to give every possible information about the spam and will also tell you about how to combat spam.

 

What is SPAM?

Spam is the abuse of electronic messaging systems (including most broadcast media, digital delivery systems) to send unsolicited bulk messages indiscriminately. Most widely recognized form of spam is email spam.

 

Where do these SPAM come from?

These spam come only from spammers and never from a legitimate user or a company. These spammers send a single email to hundreds (some times thousands or millions) of email addresses at a time. They either send it manually or use spambots to automate the process of spamming.

 

Why do spammers SPAM?

The main goal of spammers is to send the spam (unsolicited bulk messages) to as many people as possible in order to make profit. For example, John builds a small website to sell an ebook which gives information about weight loss. In order to make sales he needs publicity for his website. Instead of spending money on advertising, John decides to create an email which contains information about his site along with it’s link and send this email to say 100 email addresses in his contact list. If 1 person out of hundred buy this book john gets $10. What if he sends this email to 1000s of email addresses. He gets $100. Imagine, if he sends this email to 1 Million email addresses he gets $100000.

Now I hope you understood the idea behind spamming. So in order to make money, spammers send their advertising emails to as many people as possible without respecting the recipient’s privacy.

 

From where do SPAMmers get my email address?

On the Internet there exists many sites who collect the email IDs of people and sell them to spammers in bulk. Most often, people sign up for monthly newsletters and take up surveys. This is the time where these scam sites get their email addresses. Also many spammers collect email addresses by using spambots. These spambots collect email addresses from the Internet in order to build mailing lists. Such spambots are web crawlers that can gather email addresses from Web sites, newsgroups, forums, special-interest group (SIG) postings, and chat-room conversations.

Spammers also use the trick of creating Hoax Emails for gathering a huge list of email IDs. For example, a spammer sends a hoax email which says “Forward this Message to Help Severely Burned Child”. This email claims that 11 cents will be donated to the child’s family every time the message is sent to others. Most of the people believe this and start forwarding this hoax email to all of the IDs in their contact list. In this way the email spreads rapidly and eventually when it reaches the creator (spammer), the spammer gets a huge list of valid email addresses in the email header. When you get these kind of hoax emails, you can see for yourself in the email header which contains a huge list of email addresses of all those people to whom the email is being forwarded to. This is one of the effective methods used by spammers to gather email addresses.

 

Is SPAMming legal?

Spamming is completely illegal. Yet it is really difficult to stop spammers from spamming since they keep moving from one hosting company to another after getting banned. This makes it practically impossible to catch spammers and prosecute them.

 

How to protect my email account from getting SPAMmed?

The following methods can be used to combat email spam.

1. Use spam filters for your email account. If you’re using email services like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail etc. then spam filters are used by defaut. Each spam filter has it’s algorithm to detect spam emails and will automatically move them to SPAM folder. This keeps your inbox free from spam. However some spam emails become successful to make their way into the inbox by successfully bypassing the filters.

2. Do not post your email address in public forums, user comments and chat-rooms. Give your email address only to trustworthy websites while signing up for newsletters.

3. While taking up online surveys and filling up feedback forms, it is better not to give your personal email address. Instead singup for a dummy email account and use this for surveys and feedback forms.

4. While posting your contact email address on your website use this format:emailaddress [at] yoursite.com instead of emailaddress@yoursite.com. This protects your email address from being indexed by spambots.

5. Do not respond to hoax messages. When you receive a hoax email, avoid forwarding it to your friends. Examples of hoax messages can be found at www.hoax-slayer.com. If you really want to forward it to your friends, make sure that you use “Bcc” (blind carbon copy) option to send the email. This will hide all the email IDs to which the mail is forwarded to.

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Tips to Find Unauthorized Activity on Your Email Account

Do you suspect that your email account is under attack? Do you want to maintain total security of your email account and make it 100% hack proof? Well, Some times our email account might have got hacked and we may not be aware of that. We may believe that our email account is safe, but in reality our private and confidential information may be falling into the hands of a third person.

 

Here are some signs of  unauthorized activity on an email account.

1. Your new emails are marked as Read even if you’ve not read them.

2. Your emails are moved to Trash or even permanently deleted without your notice.

3. Your emails are being forwarded to a third party email address (check your settings-> forwarding).

4. Your secondary email address is changed.

If you come across any of the above activities on your email account, then it is a clear indication that your email account is hacked.

 

Additional Security Features in Gmail to ensure the Safety of your Account

Gmail provides an additional security feature to protect your email account through the means of IP address logging. That is, Gmail records your IP address every time you login to your Gmail account. So, if a third party gets access to your account then even his/her IP is also recorded. To see a list of recorded IP address, scroll down to the bottom of your Gmail account and you’ll see something like this.

You can see from the above figure that Gmail shows the IP address of last login (last account activity). You can click on Details to see the IP address of your last 5 activities. If you find that the IP listed in the logs doesn’t belong to you, then you can suspect unauthorized activity.

 

Steps to be carried out to stop unauthorized activity on your email account

If you feel/suspect that your account is hacked then you must immediately take the actions mentioned below 

1. Change your Password

2. Change your security question.

2. Remove any third party email address (if any) to which your account is set to forward emails.

3. Make sure that you can access the email account of your secondary email address.

4. Also change you secondary email password and security question.

This ensures that your account is safe from future attacks. But I strongly recommend that you read the following post to protect your email account from being hacked.

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Tips to Improve Email Privacy

Many websites ask for your email address when you shop online, download a free software etc. But do you know that this has a chance of affecting your email privacy through Spam emails?

Though most websites don’t use spamming as an email marketing strategy, there are a few that use junk emails that don’t care about anti-Spam laws. Here are some tips to maintain your email privacy from such threats.

Before submitting your email address you need to check the reputation of the company. Reputed websites would normally follow the right email practices to ensure your email privacy. Such companies will never want to loose their hard earned reputation by getting blammed for spamming.

See whether the websites provides email privacy statements. You need to go through these statement in detail, and know about the kind of emails that will be sent to you, how often etc. Based on this you can decide on whether you need such emails. You don’t want to give your email address to some fraud company that is thinking about handing over your email address to hundreds of other websites.

Finally, check whether the website really respects your privacy. Often you will find some text like “I agree to receive email” that comes with a check box. You can agree to receive emails by checking the check box. If the check box is already checked, it is just a good indication that the website doesn’t respect your privacy. So watch out!

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Phishing Tools Available Online

Tools that can help people potentially defraud innocent surfers are available for free download on the internet, it has been claimed.

The do-it-yourself kits provide all the essential tools for launching phishing attacks – those that use spoofed emails and fraudulent websites to trick people into giving out personal financial data.

Phishing scams are on the up. Security company MessageLabs has intercepted an average of 250,000 phishing emails a month so far in 2004, compared to just 14 phishing-related emails back in August 2003.

According to anti-virus company Sophos, the DIY kits contain all the graphics, web code and text required to construct fake websites that look like legitimate online banking or shopping sites. They also include spamming software which would let you send out millions of phishing emails as bait for potential victims.

“Until now, phishing attacks have been largely the work of organised criminal gangs, however, the emergence of these ‘build your own phish’ kits mean that any old Tom, Dick or Harry can now mimic bona fide banking websites and convince customers to disclose sensitive information such as passwords, PIN numbers and account details,” said a spokesman for Sophos.

“There is plenty of profit to be made from phishing. By putting the necessary tools in the hands of amateurs, it’s likely that the number of attacks will continue to rise.”

Surfers that receive a suspicious email that claims to come from an online bank or e-commerce site should delete them and not click on any included links.

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