They're out there. Individuals trying to make a quick buck at your expense. You labour hours on end to produce quality content on your website only to get repetitive requests for huge numbers of product or promises for the greatest deals online. As a webmaster for a cell phone and PDA site, I've had my share of spam and scams come through, mostly via email, some posted on my forum. The purpose of this article is to provide a few methods of detecting spam and scams, and provide a few examples as well. Take a look over and protect yourself from online cellular fraud.
Sending Email Anybody catch the 60 minutes episode where Andy Rooney teaches faithful viewers how to detect junk mail? Junk email works in much the same way. Items with subject headings 'Great deal', or 'limited time offer' usually can wait, and definitely don't have great offers hidden inside. Webmasters and consumers should have a golden rule, if you don't know where an offer came from (you don't know the sender) then delete it. Plain and simple. Most free email accounts, GMAIL, Hotmail, Yahoo!, have good filters that label incoming spam and scams as, well, spam. However, the majority of webmasters do not use free email accounts for the sake of professionalism. To these individuals, a basic virus detector usually includes email protection and generally will detect possible spam items before they hit your box. Having said this, if you're doing link campaigns, or joining forums, etc., in order to promote your site, it may not be a bad idea to enlist the free online email account and prevent all the unwanted junk from hitting your work emails.
Nyms not only combats spam, it is one more layer of protection against other email threats viruses, worms, spyware, adware, phishing scams, and more. Better than a spam filter, Nyms puts you in control of your incoming email because it uses disposable, alias addresses. When your Nyms email aliases are shared with spammers, you can simply disable that Nyms alias and stop the spam from flooding your real inbox. spam filter to pinpoint where unsolicited messages are coming from and kill spam at its source.
Reading Email It's been my experience that some people out there hand pick contact pages of potential victims, and therefore the email may be somewhat individualised to your site. Your name, the site name, or similar content, may be communicated within the email making it appear somewhat legitimate. Be mindful of your email accounts (contact pages) that are exposed to the world wide web. Some smart scammers have created bots that will automatically harvest emails that are sitting live on the web and input them into a spam list. Remember this when trying to determine whether something from the web is legit.
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Storing Email If an questionable email has contact information, Google it. If it's a legitimate company contacting you, they should have some type of online presence. I've noticed that the majority of spam and scams have fake mail addresses, but no online address. Furthermore, emails usually come from online web accounts like Yahoo!. Not only can you search contact information, you can serach content as well. Chances are a webmaster has posted the contents on a forum somewhere wondering about its legitimacy. I can't stress this enough, take 4 seconds and doabout the email before you consider replying.
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Email Software With these simple and quick tips you should be able to identify the majority of scam and spam emails. If in doubt, delete. If something was important that you deleted, or legitimate, the individual will likely try to contact you again. With this in mind, here are some examples of spam and scam emails from the cellular and technology industry, my comments are in brackets.
Riverside, CA 92516 Do you send order confirmations Yes, all online orders will automatically receive an order confirmation within one hour. If you do not receive a confirmation, your order did not go through the order system, 9817 to place a phone order. Spam blockers and spam filters may force the order confirmation into your email spam folder.
Antispam Software Subject: WE HAVE LOTS OF GSM/NEXTEL MOBILE PHONES AT VERY CHEAP PRICES'''''''' [The subject always varies.]
There are some things that you can do to make your online experience a little bit easier. There are some ways to keep spam from ruining your day. Spam filters are one of those things. Spam filters are an extremely successful way of managing or stopping unwanted emails, but occasionally they can work too well. While they can act very vigorously to keep your inbox from receiving spam, they can also prevent you from getting many of your wanted emails as well.
Fight Spam PHONES SELLERS INCORPORATED 12 Ademola drive,ikoyi Lagos Nigeria [Many, many, many emails have come with Nigeria as the purported origin, doesn't mean it's from there, but out of country addresses are always suspect of being fraudulent.]
Stoping Spam Dear Sir/Ma,
Block Spam LETTER OF BUSINESS RELATIONSHIP. We are mobile phones wholesalers.We deals on all brands and models of mobile phones such as Nokia,Motorola,Samsung and many more at very cheap prices. We are using this medium to look for buyers of mobile phones.Do kindly reply back if you are interested and as you do you will be glad you do,thank's and God bless.
Spam Emails God bless. Fola David President.
Email Account [A variation of the above is instead of written body content, they will actually send a product list of the cell phones they require asking for a dozen of each. Sounds like great business!...Here's the next one]
Sending Email CONSOLIDATED PHONES LIMITED
152, OZORUMBA MBADIWE STREET
OFF KINGSWAY ROAD.
VICTORY ISLAND LAGOS, [no record of this address]
TEL: 0803-3870-694
FAX: 1- 817-0845, [not even a real number]
Email:consphones_ltd@seeqmail.com. [bad domain]
or consphone@galmail.co.za
Reading Email Dear sir,
COMMERCIAL SALE OF BULK MOBILE PHONES
WE ARE EXPORTERS AND IMPORTERS OF GSM, TDMA, AND CDMA PHONES. [CDMA Phones do not run the majority of African networks.] WE ARE ONE OF THE LEADING COMPANIES IN NIGERIAN COMMUNICATIONS SECTOR, AND WE GIVE OUT OUR BEST IN SATISFYING OUR NUMEROUS CUSTORMERS. WE SELL IN BULK AND AT A VERY CHEAP RATE.
Storing Email WE WILL LIKE TO USE THIS MEDIUM TO INTRODUCE TO YOU OUR VARIOUS PHONE BRANDS AND ACCESSORIES LISTED IN OUR PRICE LIST. THESE ITEMS ARE READY FOR SALE AND THE PRICE LIST IS AS GIVEN BELOW. WE WILL BE WAITING AND READY TO ASSIST YOU IN ANY INFORMATION REQUIRED BY YOU, AND ALSO, WE ARE READY TO DO BUSINESS WITH ANY COMPANY, INDIVIDUALS OR GROUP AS LONG AS THEY ARE NOT FRAUDULENT. [Of course you wouldn't.]
Email Software WE WILL SEND OUR RANGE OF PRODUCTS AND PRICE LIST ON DEMAND.
BEST REGARD.
JULIAN JONES (MISS)
Email: jonesjulian2001@yahoo.com [This email is different than the ones atop]
For: CONSOLIDATED PHONES LTD.
Antispam Software But two examples of two spam/scam emails. Keep your eyes peeled webmasters!
Fight Spam About The Author:
Stoping Spam Visit DiscussWireless Fraud Forums for useful consumer reviews regarding the latest email and online cellular scams and spam. Post your thoughts in our comprehensive cellular forum.
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