1. Paranoia: The Best Defense Against E-Mail Attacks.
- Author
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Spanbauer, Scott, Freed, Rebecca, McEvoy, Aoife, and O'Reilly, Dennis
- Subjects
- *
INTERNET , *COMPUTER security , *EMAIL systems , *INTERNET users , *COMPUTER network protocols - Abstract
This article presents tips on using the Internet and avoiding e-mail attacks. According to the author, it is advisable to assume any message as malicious. Next, use a new found paranoia to examine messages critically. Even messages that appear to come from firms where a user has an account, may not be real. Before clicking a link or taking any action requested in a message, determine for certain that the message is genuine. Return addresses, embedded links, and images can deceive. Look for dire warnings and other classic con techniques, undoubtedly accompanied by a link to a bogus Web site where the user will be asked to enter personal information. As a clue, the phishing message may be delivered to an e-mail address that the user don't use with that company or institution. The author emphasized that if a user get a message at an address he or she never registered with, the e-mail is fake. Intuition and a suspicious nature are a good start, but to separate real messages from bogus ones, the user also need to decipher their Web addresses. Another clue is the string of numbers following the URL prefix http://. It should be remembered that every Web site resides at a specific Internet Protocol address. INSET: Nvu Brings Free Web Authoring to the Firefox Browser.
- Published
- 2005