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"Spear phishers" target your e-mail

Have you heard of “spear phishing?” it’s the newest, dangerous form of e-mail phishing. It’s more insidious than regular phishing because the person sending it knows exactly who you do business with and what kind of accounts you have. So the e-mails they send are very convincing and people open them without hesitation. They could come from a credit union, stockbroker or friend’s e-mail address. And once you open it, the crooks have access to your account numbers and passwords. If you open one of these e-mails and realize it’s not a legitimate communication, you need to assume that someone has installed what’s called a “Trojan Horse” on your computer. Until you’ve loaded a spyware program like “Spybot – Search and Destroy” or Norton, do not go to any of your financial accounts and log in. The program records your keystrokes and then the crooks sell this information to the highest bidder. Banks have another year to let your information out without protection, so practice extra caution with e-mails from now on.

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This week's poll
Which of these recent rip-off alerts shocked you the most?
Campuses taking kickbacks from health insurers.
AT&T settling a lawsuit over 3rd party billing charges.
Online loans coming with interest rates as high as 2,000%.
Scamsters pretending to collect funds for flood-relief charities.
All of the above.
None of the above.
see previous polls


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