Friday, June 23, 2006

Junk Emails

Anyone who owns a computer has this problem. Every morning when I go online, one of the first things I do is clean out the junk email that accumulates. I have two emails addresses I use, and in my Hotmail I get the usual porno web sites crap. But on both, I get the ones that make the rounds often, and too many people fall for.

You know the ones, from "Ebay," "Wells Fargo," or "AOL." "There's a problem with your account and we need you to enter your personal information or your account will be terminated. " I especially love the ones from Wells Fargo, as I don't have any kind of account with them. I have AOL, but I was suspicious when I first got one from them, as I got it on my hotmail address, and AOL doesn't have that address. This morning I got two of those emails, back-to-back.

I'm getting at least two or three of these emails a day, pretty regularly. I also noticed that they never use your name in the email, and if you look on who they also have sent the email to, you are usually grouped with people alphabetically who have a similar screen name as you! There are so many red flags that go up when you get these, I am amazed people actually fall for it. These emails are designed to get your personal info from an email that looks like it might have come from a reputable company.

And I know that everyone gets those "Nigerian" emails about sending them money so you can cash on a bigger payoff, whatever that crap is. (I've also 'won" at least 500 international lotteries in my life, too!!)

I know there's nothing much you can do to stop this garbage, except hit the delete button when they show up. But I've always wondered exactly who are these people who infect other people's email boxes?

I hope those people who are sending out the Nigerian emails have accounts that are getting hammered with the Ebay notices.

1 comment:

Michael Leggett said...

AOL=All Out of Loop=Spam City, except on AOL for Mac OS X.