Today on Part 2 of looking at different schemes that are knocking on our phones, emails, and even doors we will look at a couple which have hit me recently. I am no different from you, so if I am getting them some of you are too. So here are your alerts, warnings and call to be cautious.
How about those offers from Netflix you just received? I got this one yesterday. At first glance it appears to be from Netflix. The logo is in the upper right of the email so it must be official. The email explains that if I do not click the “Click here to verify your account” button and fill in the blanks it asks for my Netflix account will be closed.
However, let me tell you several other things about this “scary” email. The first thing I noticed is that there are some typos. The salutation is, “hello,” all lowercase. ALERT! Some of the grammar sounds strange like, “…will result in suspension Netflix.” Notice the missing parts of speech and similar sentences with comparable bad grammar. ALERT!
Next, there were two links in the email. One was “Netflix Support.” I did not click this link as I have warned you about many times here; however, you can hover a link with no ill effects. When I hovered over that link it popped up and was actually the Netflix Help site. GOOD. Then I hovered the “Click here…” link mentioned earlier. When it revealed itself, it was for some strange site in France. ALERT!
The final straw for this email trying to get my login information, or worse, is where they sent it. It came to my most commonly used email address. ALERT! The one I used online all the time, for this site, for logins to blogs, RSS feeds, etc. It can easily be found online. I buy nothing with that email address. I use a completely different email for purchases online. And this includes Netflix. They fell into my trap and sent it to an account that has had no dealings with Netflix. That is a guarantee that it was a scheme/spam. I have advised you before to get one email address for buying online ONLY. Do it if you have not done so yet.
I have given you several alerts that you can easily check in an email…use them! Most importantly…NEVER, EVER click links in emails that ask you to login to validate, verify or check something online. If you are concerned that it may be an actual email from a company, open your browser and log into the actual site like “netflix.com.” While there you will be alerted if you actually need to validate something for them. Note that this is a rare occurrence. I have been contacted by sites like this before but only because someone tried unsuccessfully to get into my account. They emailed to let me know that I should change my password.
By the way, I received two emails from Amazon over the past two weeks. They were even worse than this one. One of them spelled Amazon as “Amozan.” Spelling errors will not be found in actual emails from large companies.
Amazon pays people to check emails before are sent out.
