Spam News

I received an email earlier today that supposedly was from a classmate. The tone of the email was cordial and invited me to click on a link in the email, but provided no details regarding where the link would take me. And you couldn’t tell any of those things by looking at the link. I noticed in the list of addressees there was at least one other classmate who received the same email. Contact with that classmate revealed she had not had any contact with the other classmate in several months.

My email provider had marked this email as SPAM, but sometimes they do that to a good email. So what do you do in a situation like this? If you have no other options its best to delete that email. If you have another email address for the sender you can prepare a totally new email to that person and ask if they sent the suspicious email. Or, if you have a phone number for the person you might call them. The phone call is the least risky since it would be less likely to be compromised in some way.

Bogus emails are at one of the highest levels I can recall. Stay alert and don’t respond to any email just because it has a classmate’s name on it. Evaluate the contents of the email if you can read it without opening it. And if there is any doubt about it’s authenticity don’t open it, or respond to it, or click on a link in it. If you have no other options to safely contact the classmate just delete the problem email. If that makes someone mad at you that’s easier to deal with than a compromised email account. Just ask anyone who has had their email account hijacked by a spammer.