The Lost Knowledge Blog for Web Design

It’s not often that you get to read good news about spam, but here is a link to some information about a Nigerian spam ring that has been finally shut down!

http://www.pointblanknews.com/os2334.html

Ok here’s one spam email that is doing the rounds and even almost managed to fool a guy I know who would be considered a geek. Now the reason it almost got him is that the english is pretty well presented in the email, the information sounds very plausable. Sometimes with spam spelling and grammar can be quite bad,  but occasionally they get it almost right.

In the email below what they cleverly do is make you think that the link is actually ok to use by calling it a ‘private secure new link’

I’ll be honest this is one of those you need to know how Microsoft do things to know that they wouldn’t issue a link that wasn’t direct on their site or through the windows update software, which makes this email a very clever and dangerous spam email.

If there is an email that talks about updates from Microsoft always try the windows update first or the actual Microsoft website, they won’t send you an actual email unless you’re on some partner program, but that would be easy to know if it’s a real email as it will come from a much more obvious address and have proper links to their website.

Another sign is the jumbled up letters at the bottom, a real email from them wouldn’t have this, I’m not quite sure why it’s there, but if you know leave a comment for us all please.

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Security update

When necessary, Microsoft provides a new security update on the second Tuesday of each month and publishes a bulletin to announce the update.

Occasionally, updates are released more often.

The links below go to the latest update download.

(Privat secured new link)

http://mail1.e-corecorporation.com/postinfo.html

Each bulletin includes links to the security updates.

Microsoft has submitted a new update for all Windows OS web browsers, which brings a more stable and secure application, Internet Explorer version 7.0.195.24.

The new version has no new functionality but fixes one security vulnerability that has been classified as “high”, the highest level. Vulnerability refers to the possibility of external attacks through Internet Explorer and Outlook Express . We recommend installing the update to keep you and your system safe .

Thank you, Adrian King Director of Security Assurance Microsoft Corp.

QIFMPZCLOZNGFGOKDMCWUKXJOTRWQFNWSEWMWT

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Stay Safe

Alan Fair

Todays spam email warning is for one of the major banks HSBC. Now a lot of banks have this problem, so if you get an email from a bank that isn’t yours obviously ignore it, but if you get one for your own bank then really think about what it’s asking or telling you.

If it requires you to log into your account don’t ever click on the link in the email, go direct to the website in a browser using the proper address, then log in. If there is a problem most banks should tell you once you’ve logged in, if not you will very likely recieve a letter in the post, unless you’ve selected to only get digital letters. Even still with digital letters they should be accessible from the logged in account.

If there is an attachment to the email I think I can safely say completely ignore it everytime a bank won’t send any attachments, if however you know of a bank that does please leave a comment on this post and put in it what the file is and potentially why. This will help anyone who questions if it’s safe or not to open, thanks.

So on to the HSBC email, this one has graphics so I’ve had to take screenshots for it.

Here is an image when the email is caught in a spam filter. You will notice first the massive list of different emails, the bank would not send an email with this showing as that would be a Data Protection violation. Now you’ll notice a couple of crosses on the image, this is where images would be, but due to my spam filer it doesn’t show images by default. This can be important because if you download images the spam guys know you’re looking at the meail and will add you to further lists, so avoid this as much as possible.

Again as in other warning they don’t mention your actual name on the email it’s a generic ‘Dear Customer’ greeting, this is a good sign it’s spam.

So most spam email usally have a really bad quality logo and the email looks nothing like a real email from them. Now I don’t have a HSBC account so someone else will need to comment on whether this is accurate or not, but in the image below if this came in it would look pretty convincing to most people. Also I looked into the code and they are actually using images from the real website www.hsbc.com so it’s a good bet that it is how the real emails look.

Ok so the final and best way to tell if this is actually a spam email is to hover on the login button to see what the actual link says that it’s going to. In this case it has the followin:

http://www.hsbc.co.uk.8njxvdic.com/1/2/HSBCINTEGRATION_CAM20/00500G5SSYZI16sRkSJyjt2ntf4ep3IDV_URL/index.php

Now I’ve deleted a few things from this link just in case anyone thought to copy and paste it into a browser (please don’t).

If you break it down you will see that the real domain address isn’t right as it has http://www.hsbc.co.uk.8njxvdic.com everything after that doesn’t matter so much as some real links from genuine banks may have things similar in style. The important thing to note is that the real address should be http://www.hsbc.co.uk (or .com) that one has an extra set of letters and numbers to it before the .com ’8njxvdic’ so this means that it’s a fake address.

There are many spam emails that follow a lot of the tricks employed in this one spam email so take note and keep an eye out before you click on anything.

Stay Safe

Alan Fair