SPAM and Phishing Schemes

What is SPAM?

Spam is at it's very core "unsolicited e-mail". When a customer gets an e-mail offering them $1,000 per day working from home, this is normally considered unsolicited e-mail as the customer mostly likely didn't specifically request it.

These e-mails can be generated  one of two ways.

Some people will pay for a server to specifically generate random e-mail addresses before sending out mass amounts of e-mail messages to people with those addresses. This practice is becoming less and less used as new laws are passed preventing spamming.

Other people will create infections for computers that install themselves and begin attempting to send e-mails out to randomly-generated e-mail addresses. This practice is always growing as spammers don't have to pay for servers using this method.

Phishing Schemes

From time to time, people may receive e-mails by from a well-known company claiming that everything from their online account to their e-mail access is compromised or that they need to update their records.

The e-mail will typically ask the recipient for sensitive information, such as their login and password, however most companies will never request or solicit this information from a customer via e-mail.

If somebody receives an email like this, their best option is to delete it. They can forward it to the company involved with the phishing scheme, but the company in question may receive many of these reports and most companies are usually aware of phishing attempts during the first day or two . If you choose to send the phishing attempt to the involved company, it would be wise to include the headers of the e-mail itself as the company in question will require them to properly investigate. In order to learn how to include the headers of a message, it would be best to reach out to your e-mail service provider.