[Dixielandjazz] Paypal

David W. Littlefield dwlit at cpcug.org
Wed Feb 18 19:44:47 PST 2004


These virus-worm-spam-social engineers have gotten so sophisticated one has
to critically evaluate each eMail before opening it, looking for clues in
the subject heading, sender's eMail address, etc. 

A main reason for success of these criminals is that people are 
impulsive, compulsively curious, and/or lazy. 

If you don't recognize anything about an eMail that's explicitly relevant
to you, give it the big D!!!

I'm fortunate in that my provider lets me TELNET to their server and open
my eMail with Pine. When I view an eMail, the display shows any
attachments, their size and suffix. I can quickly delete most of the
eMails. 99% of the time, I can tell which ones are legit, but when in doubt
D. When I quit, only the eMails are left in my server directory. I then go
to Eudora (not MS Outlook) and download the mail. The internet provider is
a private communications company serving a local computer users' group.

--Sheik

At 03:07 PM 2/18/2004 -0600, Edgerton, Paul wrote:
>All of these services depend on user-initiated transactions. They have never
>asked me to log in and "verify" information. This is a type of scam called
>"social engineering," and as Bob Williams suggested, its aim is convince you
>to do something that leaves you vulnerable -- either by giving away
>privileged information such as account numbers and passwords, or by tricking
>you into running programs that give control of your computer to bad guys.
>
>The simple rule, "never open attachments you weren't expecting -- not even
>from people you know," is no longer enough to guarantee you won't be
>attacked, but it makes things a lot harder for the bad guys.




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