After the post yesterday explaining to Cindy what some of the terms used online, in regards to working from home meant. I wanted to briefly touch on a very real and scarry subject. Email scams or phishing. This is when a spammer sends you an email that requires some sort of action by you. The goal is to get you to reveal a password, user name or any other account information.

How to tell if an e-mail message is fraudulent.

Here are a few phrases to look for if you think an e-mail message is a phishing scam.

“Verify your account.”

Businesses should not ask you to send passwords, login names, Social Security numbers, or other personal information through e-mail.

If you receive an e-mail asking you to update your credit card information, do not respond: this is a phishing scam.

“If you don’t respond within 48 hours, your account will be closed.”
These messages convey a sense of urgency so that you’ll respond immediately without thinking. Phishing e-mail message might even claim that your response is required because your account might have been compromised.

“Dear Valued Customer.”
Phishing e-mail messages are usually sent out in bulk and often do not contain your first or last name.

“Click the link below to gain access to your account.”

HTML-formatted messages can contain links or forms that you can fill out just as you’d fill out a form on a Web site. The links that you are urged to click may contain all or part of a real company’s name and are usually “masked,” meaning that the link you see does not take you to that address but somewhere different, usually a phony Web site.

I don’t want to scare you, but this is very REAL and daily thousands of unsuspecting individuals fall for these email scams.

Check out this pic I took this morning…

Kieana was busy in the kitchen last night, strange since she’s never in there. But I didn’t pay much attention to what she was doing. Afterall she’s grounded, so I figured she was bored and was trying to keep occupied. Well, seems she was busy leaving me a message. Not sure if you could read what’s written on the cupcakes.

Please

un

ground

me

Loveyou

Kinda creative, don’t you think?  So I switched around her letters and left her a message … “NO” Yup, I’m just as creative.