<p>Just got 2 emails purporting to be from Costco that had my name and email. The return address on the bottom of the email is to a UPS dropbox in FL. Supposedly if I clicked on the link, I would get $50 from one email and an unspecified special prize from the other.</p>
<p>Read that others had received emails at the end of 2013, indicating a problem with Costco delivery due to problem with the address and that a 21% penalty would be assessed and delivery delayed unless the link was clicked and a correction was made.</p>
<p>Tried to forward these pfishing emails but didn’t have an email to send them to.</p>
<p>Just wanted folks to be alert and aware. UGH! Did send a regular email explaining the issue but couldnl’t forward due to no email address to forward these to.</p>
<p>I get maybe 300 junk mails a day and a huge percentage are fishing for something. It may just be a working email address, as in if the remote content loads then they know that email works. They can use valid emails for a bunch of things but the main use is simply this: bundle them up and sell them on the underweb. (BTW, in case you missed it, last week saw perhaps the first listing of counterfeit US money on known forums. Lots of speculation about who would do this and my guess is it was a phish by our government or someone like that because fake money is the one thing guaranteed to get you sent to prison. Oh, and last week saw images, faked or not, of an ATM skimmer so small it was inserted in a bank ATM inside a branch. They said their security software caught it. Makes it even more important to do the one thing that helps - other than memorize what your ATM card thingy looks like: hide your hand when you’re typing in your passcode.)</p>
<p>Anyway, modern mail programs should not load remote content automatically, especially if you make sure stuff gets dumped in your junk folder as a matter of course. And Apple Mail, among others, lets you hover the cursor over the link address to see what it actually is, like that link pretending to be citibank is actually something suspicious.</p>
<p>The most difficult one I had passing on was an emergency email from a person I know asking for money. I thought about it for a moment and rethought about it and decided it had to be a fake because email is not a sensible way to do that. Within days, I found out it was a new scam. </p>
<p>Again, much of the time all they want is your email address so they can sell it. That’s not a huge risk to you.</p>
<p>It is, however, really weird to get emails from yourself. Though my favorite is getting a phone call from my own spoofed number. I really want to pick it up and talk to me but I’m never there. In that regard, why would anyone buy anything, do anything, etc. when the sales call comes from a faked cell phone number? </p>
<p>My most irritating phishing email encounter was with Vanguard. Like many financial institutions, they have an address to forward these, and I presumed they use it to try to get them blocked or shipped to spam folders with the common providers. Instead, I ended up having my account locked - last time I’ll send them these emails.</p>
<p>I got a text from my credit card recently. Not.</p>
<p>But it served as a great lesson, as I forwarded a screen shot of the text to my kids, along with directions on what to do if they ever get a similar text. ( Call the phone number on the back of their card, and ask to speak to the fraud department. Never respond directly to the text or to the phone number attached to the text itself.). Or at least call us to ask us for input.</p>
<p>how do you take a screenshot? on my ipad and iphone, i know i can just take a photo of the page by hitting the on/off switch and the round button but don’t know how to take screen shots from desktops or regular laptops.</p>
<p>If you have Win 7, you have a snipping tool (which looks like a lasso). Click on that, then drag across the screen (while holding down the mouse button) to select what you want on the screen, then save the “snip” as a jpeg. </p>
<p>Alternatively, using the older Win method, hold control and print screen buttons. Open Paint, then click paste. It will paste the entire screenshot. Save as a graphics file or crop what you need and then save.</p>
<p>If you have a Mac - wait for others to chime in. </p>
<p>On a Mac, command-shift-3 is the whole screen. Command-shift-4 lets you select an area - drag the thingy around by holding down the space key while holding down the mouse button or drag over a specific window and click to get just that one. Saves to desktop.</p>
<p>I think the weirdest current phone scam may be “your account is locked”. They may claim to be Chase or some other bank. It isn’t. It never is. </p>
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