7 Ways On How To Prevent An Email Theft

1."Gone Phishing?" Do not give your life away!
If you are not aware of what "phishing" is, the name should give you a hint. Except the "phish" that ends up taking the bait has to spend countless hours restoring their identity. The more bait they email out, the better their chances. It's a numbers game. The more people they spam, the better their chances are for collecting personal and credit card information. This is especially true with the eBay community.

2.Protect yourself against trojan "phishing". This phrase comes from a time of war where trojan warriors would send a large gift to their enemies in the form of a horse. Inside the horse would contain Trojan warriors. Once they were on the inside of the enemies walls, they would attack. With trojan "phishing" when you download an unsafe file or spyware, the trojan will install keylogging software. Key logging software records your every keystroke and sends it back to the hacker. Once it's on your computer, your antivirus software or firewalls become useless. Only download from trusted sites.

3. Do not respond to emails that ask you to go to their website and update your account information. These websites and emails will appear to be your real bank, PayPal, eBay accounts...etc. If you aren't sure on whether it's real or not, then go to the URL in your browser and actually type the website's address. Whatever you do, do not click the link and enter your information!

4. Be aware of the "feeling out" email that a fraudster first sends you.
This email has a simple subject describing their interest in purchasing any products or services you might be selling. In this email, they want to know if you accept certain types of credit cards and they want to know if you ship internationally.

5.Be cautious of emails that ask you to shop at their online stores if you've never heard of the company. Scammers are known to set up phony websites, collect orders and credit card information, and then disappear. Once again, if you are not sure, type the url of a known e-commerce website and look for similar products. You can also type the name of the business in Google and if they have scammed others, someone will have written about them.

6.If you are not sure on whether the email is a scam, you can always check the Ip Address in the email header for a perfect match. This will verify the country the email was sent from. To find the email header and the ip address of the sender, right click on the title of the spam email and select "options". The real ip address is usually listed at the bottom of the email header. Most of the time the information provided at the top of the email header is fake. When you locate the ip address enter it into one of the following internet registries:

APNIC (Asia Pacific network)

RIPE (European)

ARIN (American Registry)

LACNIC (South America & Caribbean)

If there are any discrepancies, then you can be pretty certain it is a scam

7. Be extremely cautious if the email involves the following scams: lottery scams, the 419, "Nigerian scams, multimedia piracy, investment and securities scams, chain letters, and illegally selling prescription drugs. These are on the rise on the internet.