Mail

Microsoft has made the right decision to temporarily turn off Hotmail’s vacation (e.g., out-of-office) reply feature. Flip the switch off permanently, I say. “In our fight against spam, we sometimes have to make hard choices, and we had to make one this week. We discovered that spammers were using Hotmail’s automatic vacation reply feature to send spam from their Hotmail accounts,” Krish Vitaldevara, Windows Live Hotmail lead program manager, blogged late yesterday. I missed the post because of Apple’s iPhone OS 4 launch. I spotted the announcement first at LiveSide about an hour ago. ...

There are good reasons to be suspicious of e-mail. Some e-mail messages might be phishing scams, some might carry viruses. Images in spam e-mail might turn out to be pornographic, or to include Web beacons, which can be adapted to secretly send a message back to the sender. Follow these guidelines to help protect yourself when suspicious mail shows up in your Inbox. If you receive a phishing e-mail message, do not respond to it. Don’t open junk mail at all If an e-mail looks suspicious, don’t risk your personal information by responding to it. Delete junk e-mail messages without opening them. Sometimes even opening spam can alert spammers or put an unprotected computer at risk. Don’t reply to e-mail unless you’re certain that the message comes from a legitimate source. This includes not responding to messages that offer an option to “Remove me from your list.” Do not “unsubscribe” unless the mail is from a known or trusted sender. Use the junk mail tools in your e-mail program. For example, Windows Live Hotmail gives you the option to unsubscribe from mail that you previously had trusted or requested. This sends a notice back to the sender to have you removed from their list, while at the same time automatically adding the sender to your block list. Approach links in e-mail messages with caution Links in phishing e-mail messages often take you to phony sites that encourage you to transmit personal or financial information to con artists. Avoid clicking a link in an e-mail message unless you are sure of the real target address, or URL. ...

A few clues can help you spot fraudulent e-mail messages or links within them. What does a phishing e-mail look like? Phishing e-mail messages are designed to steal your identity. They ask for personal data, or direct you to Web sites or phone numbers to call where they ask you to provide personal data. Phishing e-mail messages take a number of forms: They might appear to come from your bank or financial institution, a company you regularly do business with, such as Microsoft, or from your social networking site. They might appear to be from someone you know. Spear phishing is a targeted form of phishing in which an e-mail message might look like it comes from your employer, or from a colleague who might send an e-mail message to everyone in the company, such as the head of human resources or IT. They might ask you to make a phone call. Phone phishing scams direct you to call a customer support phone number. A person or an audio response unit waits to take your account number, personal identification number, password, or other valuable personal data. The phone phisher might claim that your account will be closed or other problems could occur if you don’t respond. They might include official-looking logos and other identifying information taken directly from legitimate Web sites, and they might include convincing details about your personal information that scammers found on your social networking pages. They might include links to spoofed Web sites where you are asked to enter personal information. Here is an example of what a phishing scam in an e-mail message might look like. ...