The WOW! Buzz

Having just returned from a short vacation, my email box at work was full to say the least.   Even though I check messages and discard many while away with my iPhone, they still piled up to a significant number before I returned.  Lurking in the middle of my legitimate business messages were no less than three announcements (which had managed to get through our rather aggressive spam filter) heralding the news that I had either won or inherited a significant amount of money to be drawn on a foreign bank if I responded within 48 hours to the solicitation.

I continue to be amazed at the persistence and skill of the scam artists out there that will do almost anything to obtain personal information to steal a) your identity, or b) your money. Some of these ploys are obvious, but I’ve noticed that the trend is toward an increase in sophistication for these types of email/internet scams.  This is unsettling on several levels, but I believe that educated internet commerce is reasonably safe if one is careful.

I ran across this link from Verisign, one of the web security providers in our industry, that was a well designed test on how to spot spoofed websites, and I thought that I would share it with all of you.  Please understand that there is a commercial element to this test (aka, Verisign is trying to sell security services with this test, particularly the last half, which can be ignored), but the first half of the “test” gives some specific things to look for in web sites where things “aren’t quite right”.  I passed with 100%, but it took some time to find the issues that were the “giveaways” in some cases.  Take the test.  Hopefully the knowledge gained will help you engage internet commerce more safely as these guys get more and more sophisticated:

Click here to take Verisign’s Phish or no Phish test.

Until next time….