Get a FREE fully-working copy of Steganos Security Suite 7 (worth £49.99) when you sign up to the Practical PC Newsletter. How to Avoid being ripped off by Web scams and SPAM!
David Dorn looks at the top ways Internet fraudsters, thieves and vagabonds try to dupe new users into parting with their details and cash, and gives you some top tips to stay safe.
The thing about the Internet, and particularly the Web, is that it's faceless. Unless you know the sender of an email, or the author of a Web site, you have absolutely no idea of his or her character, what they look like, where they're from, or anything at all, really. Also, the Web is enormous - global, in fact, and the very tools that the Internet provides to make its use easy and quick are the same tools that fraudsters will use to empty your pockets, especially if you're new to the 'Net and a little wary of it.
But worry not. Help is at hand. These scams and SPAMs are readily identifiable and easy avoidable. So here are my top tips to help you make sure you don't get caught out.
1 Never reply to an unsolicited email offering great things.
The fact is, if you have not asked for details on the next best thing since sliced bread, what's sitting in your mailbox is what's known as SPAM - an unsolicited commercial email. These are the scourge of your inbox - much like the junk mail you find on your front door mat most days of the week, but worse, in the fact that you can end up with far too many of them cluttering up your system, hiding the emails you want to read.
They're easily recognisable, though. They'll often have obvious subjects like "Earn $$$1,000,000 from your PC" or "Boost your sex life with Viagamins". Pretty hard to miss, eh?
Others are more subtle, with subjects like "Thanks for your order" or "Your <insert some product name here> is awaiting your confirmation email". The temptation to reply to this more subtle kind is great. But don't do it. The SPAM got to you as a result of someone making an educated guess - it seems logical that DavidDorn@aol.com might be valid email address, so the SPAM merchants simply want you to confirm that yours is alive, up and running and ready to collect yet more rubbish.
Just delete such messages unread - it saves time.
2 Never divulge your password to any service or anyone.
It's fairly obvious, this, but you'd be surprised how many people will readily hand over a password to just about anyone who asks. Why? Because of one of two things - either they think the person asking for it is a kosher member of a service's staff, or because they think it's insignificant. In neither case should you part with the details, and here's why.
In the first case - the bogus employee scenario - there's never any need for them to know your current password. If there's a problem with your account, the technical people at your ISP or wherever can change your password themselves, and then allow you to change it to something else once they've checked the problem out. They don't need your password.
In the second scenario, many folks will give a mate or a "friend" they've met online their password to an online service because they don't have to pay to use it, and there's something there that they think these faceless folks might like to see. Where the trouble starts is that all too many folks use the same password for multiple services - so you tell your online friend to log on using the ID "JohnDoe" and the password "Bambi". There's every possibility that you use "Bambi" as a password on other services - and probably JohnDoe as an ID, as well. Congratulations - you've just given access to your other services, that you may have to pay for by the minute, to lord knows how many people. Don't do it!
3. Keep a "secret identity"
I've got more email addresses than you can shake a stick at, but one is, more or less, secret. I only share it with people that I really feel are important to me, that I really want to get email from. Only those people get to know that address, and I never, ever use it on Web sites, in chat rooms, IMs, or anywhere else. Everybody knows that PPCUpdate@aol.com gets to the editor of PPC (ed: not any more!). What most people don't know is that it gets hundreds and hundreds of emails per day - more than I could ever answer, and most of which are SPAM. So I don't use that address for sending email at all. I have a "secret" address which I use for the stuff I really need to work with on a daily basis, and a slightly less secret address as a backup. I scan the PPCUpdate mailbox every day, yes, and look for known email addresses. But that's all. The "secret" address, though, has a very much more handleable quantity of email, and it takes priority. You'll never see a profile for it, you'll never ever get it out of me - unless I particularly want you to have it. You might like to do the same.
4. Never use your main credit card to "prove your age"
Nowadays, many websites of a certain nature will ask for your credit card details as a proof of your age. Now, why would they want to do that? How does it prove anything, other than you are old enough to have a credit card with whatever issuer you're with? The big question is, what can they do with those details once they've got them? Let's face it, for most transactions, you have to give the number, the issuer, the expiry date. But who is running the site requesting the details? Can you trust them? I don't, as a matter of course.
Well, try this. Getting a credit card is easy - offers of new cards are always falling through your letterbox. Take one of them up, and get a credit limit of, say, less than £100 on it - something you can afford to lose. Only ever use that one for "proving" your identity. If anyone manages to intercept the details and try to use them for nefarious purposes, they're stuck at £100 - or the issuer will be on the phone to you asking questions.
What this trick does is to safeguard you normal credit card, the one that might have a credit limit of thousands of pounds on it. Using this trick doesn't mean you won't get ripped off, but it does mean that you effectively limit how much you can be ripped off for.
There are many more tips and tricks I can pass on, but they'll come in another instalment of this short series. In the meantime, use your eyes and brain before you click - the warning signs are always there if you look
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