How to Stop Spam Emails

Jim Slick of Slick Cyber Systems explains how to stop SPAM emails. And how to tell if an email is a SPAM or legitimate email. What you should look for and how to deal with them. (Excerpts from the video on our YouTube channel.) Hey folks, Jim from Slick Cyber Systems. I want to show you some email stuff today and we are obviously on my computer. I am in my quarantine manager, as you could see, from our Eagle-wing service, which is a hosted exchange service.

Is Spam the same as Junk Email?

So I’m trying to show you is good email versus spam versus bad email. So, let’s start with them some spam. How about some official Santa letters?

Hmm boy yeah, that looks like really quality stuff from finecolours.com. (take a look at the spelling) Can we tell that’s an overseas thing? That would be some good spam garbage. In the email, we have things like health insurance or junk email for a vacuum hair trimmer or satellite tv. Brilliant marketing right? No, it’s not! Spam is, email, that’s coming to you that shouldn’t be coming to that you didn’t ask for it. Next is a classic outlook support email claiming it fixes incoming email issues for my email not working. If it didn’t work, why would I get this email? Let’s take a look at it closely. Shall we see the term Outlook support in quotes? Well, I could put anything I could put Joe’s Bar and Grill there. If I was sending you an email, I could put just about anything. I wanted to do it’s simple to do so now. Let’s look at the parentheses of who it’s coming from. Let’s look at this piece first, so Microsoft, blah blah blah yeah. That’s a gnarly long URL, but here’s the real dead giveaway that this is spam. You can see the email address is xbox.com. Now, if you are having email issues, first of all, you wouldn’t be getting the email. Second of all, Microsoft is not going to be sent by you an email at Xbox.com.

Phishing Email

Yes, Microsoft makes Xbox. No, you will not get an official email from Microsoft at Xbox.com. Yes, the email is valid. But, when you start to look at the body of this thing, you realize how sloppy and messed up the email really is. It really is guys that this is true, 110 percent, and it’s not this isn’t spamming. This was a hacking, email, or phishing email. Actually, there was a link that was in here and they were trying to get you to click it. This link they sent to you says click below and fix now. If you would have clicked the link below. You would have seen you would have clicked on a link that would have taken you to a bad website. You would have been infected most likely with a keystroke logger. Which is basically a program that monitors every key that you’re pressing on your keyboard. That is the way they can watch over time the info you type on your computer. They are hoping to collect credit card information, personal data such as driver’s license numbers, or your banking information. This is just despicable when I see this kind of stuff, but it’s just so so common. A classic example, guys of what they call a phishing email, not fishing because they are “Phishing” for suckers to click on their garbage and you know get trapped. There’s a cat-mouse game that is constantly going on with spam, phishing attempts, and other threats. We the good IT people are trying to prevent the quote, unquote bad IT people from taking advantage of you. But no sooner do we get ahead. The bad IT guys figure something else out and they get ahead a little. This is an ongoing constant battle for your information.

What can I do to protect my computer?

Protecting yourself online is simple to use common sense when you’re looking at an email. If you see something odd or strange like a subject Russian woman to date in an email. This is probably going to be a bad email that is going to give you problems. Another classic example of a bad email is praying on your fears about a stolen package from FedEx or UPS. Who doesn’t buy a bunch of stuff online these days, so how do I protect myself, you ask? I would recommend that you check to see if UPS or FedEx are real. But how? Call them before clicking links and ask them what is the mailbox they send you notifications from? If this does not match what they tell you, then delete the email. See the common theme here. Don’t click links, you are not more certain where they go.

Spelling mistakes in phishing emails

Something else you want to consider is the spelling in an email. A lot of these bad people or scammers, we will call them. They are foreign and often these foreigners can’t speak or type English very well. Consequently, you’ll see some really strange messages with odd spellings of words. Often the grammar in these messages will be horrible. If you see grammar or spelling errors. These should raise some red flags for you. No major professional company is gonna, have grammatical and spelling errors as it’s sending out emails to you. (Nobody’s perfect but if you apply this logic when investigating emails it will definitely help).

Common sense opening email

Trust your instincts and use common sense. If you did not ask for the email or do not know the person that sent the email to you. Just don’t open it! Even if you do know the person, but it looks strange. Like an invoice is attached, (That’s a very common one nowadays). Don’t open the email! Just hold your shift key down (for Outlook) and hit delete. Do not open it at any cost. Grammar counts when opening an email. Look for things like spelling grammatical errors. This would be an indication of a potentially bad email. I’m not just talking about junk mail but phishing emails.

Phishing phone calls

One last thing and that would be about the people calling you on the phone. If somebody calls you and says you have a virus on your computer. This should also be a sign of a scammer at work. No one is going to call you, let alone someone from Microsoft, (which is what they always use). The scam goes something like this. The scammer will call saying this is Microsoft, calling my name’s Fred. The reality is no, is not Fred and he is not Microsoft. They are nothing but a pirate and you’re trying to take advantage of someone.

Avoid the temptation to have fun with scammers

Avoid having fun with scammers, even if you know they are scammers. Because if you want to play with them a little and have fun. Like making them hang on the phone for 20 minutes and then hang upon them. It’s your prerogative, but If I were you, though, I wouldn’t play with the devil. I would just hang up and call it a day.

Get help from an IT professional.

Remember, the tips we are supplying are recommendations. Should you need help with a virus, or other issue contact an IT professional like Slick Cyber Systems don’t try to take it on yourself. Remember, calling Microsoft or Apple is not going to fix your virus problem.

Can an Apple product get a virus?

The simple answer to this is yes, an Apple computer can get a virus just like any other computer. We had a gentleman call the other day. He had four Apple computers in his business and he had somebody maliciously come in and place keystroke loggers and all of them. So I don’t think just because you run an Apple that you’re safe. It doesn’t matter. Linux, Apple, Microsoft doesn’t matter, what the operating system is guys, it can be, it can be easily hacked. Easily taken advantage of even raspberry pie stuff, it can be, can be hacked. So don’t have a false sense of security. I don’t care what operating system you’re running. Make sure you have the proper protection, a good firewall, or a unified threat management appliance on the outside of your network. Protecting your entire network inside by putting a firewall in your local computer is quite honestly stupid. If a hacker gets that far they’re already too far. They’ve already touched your computer. You’re done. When getting a firewall, get a good, unified threat management appliance like a Sonic Wall on the outside. Yes, they are a little expensive. They’re worth every penny. Remember, it’s protecting your business. So if you don’t care about yourself and your personal information, well then don’t do it. But if you do, I would do something about it and then for your computer itself on my computer. I happen to have VIPRE and Malwarebytes both. I happen to use both and that’s my two programs of choice. One is doing in a virus, the other is doing any malware. There is a little cross over in between. But you know that do it right and I don’t care what OS you have. You won’t have a problem and if you use that with good common sense, you won’t have a problem.

Stop Spam Email

Slick Cyber Systems has the knowledge and experience to help your business block spam and eliminate the risks that Spam email can bring to your network and the safety of the users at large. You can give us a call at 570-215-8888 option one. You could also visit us on the web at www.slickcybersystems.com. Hopefully, you found this enjoyable and informative. If so, let us know if there are any points that you want to make that we didn’t make or forgot to make. Recovering from Cyber Attack