Hoax Emails

In the news today is a warning about a new scam involving a fictitious ‘dislike’ button on Facebook.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10987725

It’s still amazing how easily people can miss the warning signs in scam emails, clicking their way into potential malicious virus-traps or spam-bots which in turn spam all the victim’s contacts.

If you’re reading this because you got here by clicking a link in an email – I might be talking about you!

I mocked up a spam email, including plenty of warning signs that you shouldn’t click the link in the email. I thought it would be interesting to see if anyone actually did click on it… There weren't many people in the newsroom, but within a few minutes more than a dozen had clicked on it, no question. About three colleagues did ask me if it was genuine.

Below is the email, and beneath that, I explain some of the warning signs, and tips on how to spot them.

Subject: LOL - heres one for you!

Alright?

Ok this might seem to good to be true but Ive set up a fun charity page for homeless children in London. PLEASE READ you don't have to do anything and it wont cost you A SINGLE PENNY.

Ive copied my charity appeal link below, for every time a user clicks on my link the company will donate 2p to the charity. That doesn’t sound like a lot but IMAGINE if i can get enough people to click it with the power of the internet…….we could raise THOUSAND OF POUNDS!!!!

Please it only takes a moment of your times and you can help the homeless in London:

http://bit.ly/charityappeal

Please, please forwardthis mail to at least ten of your friends and together we can make sure these children sleep well at night!!

Here are the warning signs that it’s a scam email:

1) The subject. So often scam subjects just look wrong. Would the person who sent you the email write like that? I never write ‘LOL’…and I’m normally good with apostrophes. Scam subjects are also designed to hook you in – so you might be suspicious if it instantly seems too good to be true.

2) Use of capitals and punctuations. This isn’t always the case with scams – but so often they’re written very badly. You should be wary if there are too many capitals, exclamation marks, and badly spelled words all over the place. Again – does it read as you would expect it to read from whoever sent it to you? If not, and they’ve blindly forwarded you something…again, be very suspicious!

3) The link. You have a strange forwarded email with a link in it. Here’s where you stop and never, ever click that link. If in doubt, just email the person back to check it’s a genuine email. People won’t mind you being suspicious. Even if you can see the link is for what looks like a reputable well-known website, still be suspicious.

4) “Please forward this email to friends”. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an email that instructs you to forward it to as many of your friends as you can that isn’t utter rubbish (with the rare exception of friends or colleagues who might be doing genuine fundraising, etc). If you’re already suspicious…and then you get to the bit which tells you to forward it on…delete it!

5) I haven’t personally signed it off, which also suggests I haven’t written the email.

If it’s too good to be true, it is.

There are some really good scams out there – and if I’m ever in any doubt, I just copy and paste a sentence from the email, and stick that into Google with the word ‘hoax’ on the end. You’ll quickly see in the results whether other internet users have flagged it up as a hoax, and how dangerous it is.