Open letter to the electronic community
Sep. 13th, 2004 12:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
muck_a_luckDear Everybody:
I cannot get over how many smart people are suckers for e-mail scams.
A woman at my husband's work circulated the Butt Spider warning. To everyone at the firm. 500 people?
Opposing counsel helpfully sent me a warning about a supposedely deadly new computer virus, which of course, was just a hoax e-mail. Which she probably forwarded to 100 people. Maybe more.
A lawyer sitting near me got a warning from his "tech support team" telling him to run an attached piece of software to purge a malicious virus from his computer. The attachment, of course, was a worm, and he was down for two days and had to pay tech support to come in and fix his machine.
My good friend has been answering spoof e-mails asking for information about her PayPal account because they "looked real." She uses fake information in her answers, but still...
So here's my humble suggestion. You know how we all get lots of forwarded e-mails, mostly jokes, or more and less inspirational cr**, etc.?
I think we should start a new chain e-mail.
Let's start one with a list of important resources and tips in it to prevent people falling for these stupid scams.
Your most imporant anti-idiocy resource, the Symantec Hoax page: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html. If you get an e-mail warning you about a new virus, don't forward it to all your friends til you check the hoax page. Please.
If you get an e-mail from a business, asking for account or other personal information, never answer the e-mail or click any links or reveal any information. No legit business will get info from you this way. Contact the business independently from the e-mail (not via informaiton provided in the e-mail.) Check your actual account. Go to the corporate webpage. Confirm the request made in the e-mail through legit sources.
If you get an attachment. Don't open it. Ever. Ever. Ever. No tech support person will violate this rule. If you think it might be legit, call first. To a number independent of any info in the e-mail. Check the hoax page.
If you get an e-mail telling you to do something to your computer, like delete "harmful" files, don't do it. Call an independent source and confirm that you need to follow the instructions. Check the hoax page.
If you hear about a spider biting people on the butt and killing them, or possibly about how AIDS in being spread in Florida by syringes attached to gas pumps, please don't forward this crap. Go to Webcrawler, or some other search engine, and do a search on "spider Olive Garden" or "AIDS gas pump" and I guarantee you will pop up four urban legend sites telling you that this is a fake story.
My mom suggests http://www.truthorfiction.com/. Has potential.
Rule of thumb. If it comes into your e-mail box, it's a lie. Don't be a sucker.
With kind regards,
CK
I cannot get over how many smart people are suckers for e-mail scams.
A woman at my husband's work circulated the Butt Spider warning. To everyone at the firm. 500 people?
Opposing counsel helpfully sent me a warning about a supposedely deadly new computer virus, which of course, was just a hoax e-mail. Which she probably forwarded to 100 people. Maybe more.
A lawyer sitting near me got a warning from his "tech support team" telling him to run an attached piece of software to purge a malicious virus from his computer. The attachment, of course, was a worm, and he was down for two days and had to pay tech support to come in and fix his machine.
My good friend has been answering spoof e-mails asking for information about her PayPal account because they "looked real." She uses fake information in her answers, but still...
So here's my humble suggestion. You know how we all get lots of forwarded e-mails, mostly jokes, or more and less inspirational cr**, etc.?
I think we should start a new chain e-mail.
Let's start one with a list of important resources and tips in it to prevent people falling for these stupid scams.
Your most imporant anti-idiocy resource, the Symantec Hoax page: http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html. If you get an e-mail warning you about a new virus, don't forward it to all your friends til you check the hoax page. Please.
If you get an e-mail from a business, asking for account or other personal information, never answer the e-mail or click any links or reveal any information. No legit business will get info from you this way. Contact the business independently from the e-mail (not via informaiton provided in the e-mail.) Check your actual account. Go to the corporate webpage. Confirm the request made in the e-mail through legit sources.
If you get an attachment. Don't open it. Ever. Ever. Ever. No tech support person will violate this rule. If you think it might be legit, call first. To a number independent of any info in the e-mail. Check the hoax page.
If you get an e-mail telling you to do something to your computer, like delete "harmful" files, don't do it. Call an independent source and confirm that you need to follow the instructions. Check the hoax page.
If you hear about a spider biting people on the butt and killing them, or possibly about how AIDS in being spread in Florida by syringes attached to gas pumps, please don't forward this crap. Go to Webcrawler, or some other search engine, and do a search on "spider Olive Garden" or "AIDS gas pump" and I guarantee you will pop up four urban legend sites telling you that this is a fake story.
My mom suggests http://www.truthorfiction.com/. Has potential.
Rule of thumb. If it comes into your e-mail box, it's a lie. Don't be a sucker.
With kind regards,
CK
