Spam

Protect Yourself from Malicious Email Attachments

by Jay on March 3, 2010 · 0 comments

in Misc.

Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of SPAM emails with attachments. The “sender” tells me that I need to open the attachment to provide them with information.

This might sound obvious but you should never open attachments from people you don’t know, especially if it’s a weird-looking attachment (i.e. download.exe or certification.txt). No reputable organization is going to get information from you this way.

You can’t assume that your SPAM filter or software is going to keep all malicious emails out. The examples below were successfully delivered to my inbox:

Example #1 – There are a lot of tell-tale signs that this email from “Bank of America” is fraudulent.

  1. The email is from auto.bot@verify.com. Does that even sound legit?
  2. It’s sent to “undisclosed-recipients”
  3. There is an HTML attachment (restore account.html)
  4. I don’t bank with Bank of America

spam

Example #2 – This one from “UPS” isn’t quite as obvious as the first example. Here’s what I saw:

  1. UPS would have probably left a notice on my front door. How would they have possibly gotten my email address anyway?
  2. The notice is almost three months after the supposed delivery date
  3. There is a text file attachment (_Certification_.txt)
  4. The copy in the email just doesn’t sound like something that would come from UPS. I don’t think they even say “United Parcel Service” anymore

ups_spam

Here are some things you can do to protect yourself from malicious email attachments:

  1. Don’t open emails or attachments from people you don’t know or that seem “fishy” (Pay special attention to the subject line and who the email is supposedly from)
  2. Have anti-virus software installed on your machine. Most of them will check incoming email (assuming you’re using Microsoft Outlook) automatically. AVG is a good free one
  3. Make sure that whatever email program you are using blocks images in all incoming emails (In Outlook, go to Tools>Trust Center to block images). Blocking images does two things. First, the spammer can’t track that you’ve opened the email (even if it was previewed in your preview pane). Without getting too technical, spammers need images to display in the email to track whether or not the email was opened. Second, malicious programs can’t automatically execute in these emails when opened

Just be careful with attachments. It it doesn’t feel right, don’t open it.

I hate it when I’m automatically opted-in to an email list

by Jay on January 31, 2008 · 0 comments

in Email Marketing

On Tuesday, I just happened to come across Reunion.com on Google and thought I’d sign up just to see if I could cross pathes with an old friend or schoolmate. It was an extremely easy process and took me only a couple of minutes. One thing that I didn’t know was that they automatically signed me up to receive every type of email they send. Almost immediately, I got an email saying that 5 people had searched my name. Out of curiosity, I looked at the people that supposedly searched my name. Of course I hadn’t heard of any of the people and figured they were searching for another Jay Lane. There are tons of them out there.

Anyway, I decided I didn’t want to receive the emails anymore so I clicked on “Opt Out/Modify Alert Frequency” in the email. They had opted me into like 5 different kinds of emails. I selected that I never wanted to receive future emails. Being the niave marketing professional that I am, I expected to not receive any additional emails.

reunion.gif
So of course I receive an email the very next day telling me about someone in Texas searching my name. I went back to my preferences and everything I had checked was still checked so why am I still receiving these alerts?

My next thought was to see if I could delete my account. They did provide an easy option for this so I went ahead and deleted my account. I wonder if I’ll still get emails?

My point with this big rant is that if customers asks to be removed from a mailing list, they should be immediately. As an email marketer, I understand why subscribers sometimes report our emails as spam. It’s because they know they’ll automatically be removed.

As email marketers, we need to do a better job of doing what our customers ask when they want it, not when it’s convenient for us.