Email, Deception Around Every Corner!

"Look out! Do not click that link or open that attachment. Wait, stop; oh no! It is too late; everything about you and others in that email has just been stolen by a complete stranger! Email is a great form of communication today; but it has many hidden and deceptive dangers. Beware of the deception that can come with an email and take action to protect yourself now!

Email has been around for almost 30 years now. Of course at first it was only used by a select few, and many of us adopted a name for them; Nerds! Later, mainly because of AOL; the average person was given access to the internet and started using email. All kinds of uses were found for it starting with Businesses and then later personal use. Today there are thousands of email providers and millions; maybe even as much as 2 billion people use email on a regular basis. In fact it is so much used that now you do not even need to own or have access to a PC as you can check email anywhere from your own cell phone! With so many uses for email and so many people using it; there are some problems that we all face on a regular basis.

The first of these problems is one of the most dangerous, and that is identity theft! Over and over people unwittingly include in their emails everything from names and addresses to social security numbers and bank information, thus opening themselves up to attack. The best way to prevent this is simply not to include your personal information in the email even when sending it to people you know and trust. There are always those people laying in wait to catch that email on its way to someone else. Most emails are secure, but there are many ways the information contained in them can be stolen or leaked to others who should not be seeing it. This is especially true of email accounts hosted by large public servers like Yahoo, Gmail, MSN, and AOL. The reason these and others like them are not that safe is because they all have built in forgot password or user name programs that rely on answering questions or filling in personal data.

Anyone who wants to try and gain access to your email can potentially use those programs to break in without you even knowing sometimes. All they need is some personal data about you or history and often they can get past the security of questions and alternate information that is used to reset passwords and user names. Once in your account; they take everything there and use it in endless ways; mostly not to your benefit. The best way to avoid this is to use an email client that is hosted on your own domain name or a domain that does not rely on security questions if your forget your password or ID but instead on an alternate email address that is also secure.

Using odd answers to those security questions can sometimes help, but even then many programs like Yahoo will allow you to revert to old security questions to access the account. Anything obvious like, ""What is your mother's maiden name?"" though can easily be guessed or researched. If you do want to send personal information by email; which I admit is easier at times that mailing it; then use a secure email service and not one of the big public ones.

Another issue we face in using email are attacks of a different nature that can end up accomplishing the same thing as someone who gets in and reads your messages. This is the Trojan! As in Greek Mythology or history as some believe a Trojan is something that will look harmless but instead can be very dangerous. For email users they come in endless varieties and all of them are bad. Some will just cause damage just like the armies of Greece that invaded Troy's unbreakable walls by hiding in a giant wooden horse. These can literally destroy your computer or erase everything on it. Others may seem less dangerous but are in fact even worse because they will collect information about you that can be used for everything from marketing schemes to stealing your identity!

One of the most common forms of attack is the link or file included or attached to an email. Many times these come in the form of an advertisement with a link or an email from what looks like a known source like your bank that will have an attached file. The moment you click or open that file the trap is sprung and the armies of darkness swarm all over your computer! Sometimes it will appear that nothing at all happens; be guaranteed though that behind the scenes a battle is being waged to get at whatever is on your computer. The best way to protect yourself is simply not to open these files or click links that you do not know where they came from or where they are going. Of course if you're a click happy person then I hope you have a strong antivirus program installed on your PC which will fight back on your behalf.

A less obvious source of attack is often overlooked to the annoyance of many. This is the dreaded forward or chain mail. It puzzles me to no end how many people fall over and over for these schemes. A lot of them are pure nonsense and prey upon a person's emotions or religious devotion. One person will get an email that tells a cute or emotional story and at the end of it will be some message stating that if you send this message to 5 other people you will be blessed or get lucky. Of course over and over again people will forward these messages to their friends, family, and office mates! In the meantime the person who created that email is gaining every name and email that the message gets sent to; often resulting in thousands of contacts. When the email has done its job all of those contacts can now be used directly for Trojan attacks or sold to others for the same purpose.

These people will even sell your email to companies who now will bombard you with ads telling you to buy this or sign up for that. It is a big business simply for the fact that so many people; especially young people; fall for it over and over. So do us all a favor if you get one of these and delete the email immediately and tell your friend that sent it to cut it out.

All in all email is a vital form of communication these days and will probably continue to be so for years to come! Just be careful and protect yourself and others by following the few tips mentioned above. It is always better to be safe and take a little extra caution or preventative steps than it is to deal with the aftermath of an attack on your personal information or computer!"