Today, we live in a digital world. We use the internet to shop and communicate with our friends. We go online to find information about products and services, and sometimes even to pay our bills (or at least get bills from all the places we’ve shopped). It’s easy to forget that there are bad people out there trying to trick us into giving them money or personal information.

That’s why it’s important that you protect yourself when you’re online! In this article, I’ll talk about spam emails, scams, and phishing emails. Then I’ll give some tips on how to stay safe while using the internet.

Spam and “Phishing”

Spam is a type of unsolicited email. Fun fact: The word “spam” comes from the Monty Python sketch about a cafe that wanted to add Spam to its menu and had to keep yelling at people to leave their tables so they could serve more customers. Spam can contain malware, links to malware, or fake websites that try to trick you into entering personal info such as passwords and credit card numbers so it can be stolen by criminals.

• If you receive an email with any of these characteristics:
• it’s unsolicited (meaning you don’t know who sent it)
• it contains too many advertisements or promotions for products or services you don’t want
• it has bad grammar and spelling mistakes – some spammers use automated programs instead of actual people

Scams

A scam is any type of fraud or confidence trick that makes money for its perpetrator. It can take many forms such as email, phone, online, in person and others. There are many types of scams including: phishing scams, financial scams, business opportunity scams, romance scams and more.

If an email looks like it came from the bank but it doesn’t have your exact name at the beginning (e.g., “Dear John Smith” instead of just “Dear John”), it’s probably not legit. The same goes if there are typos in the text; also check to see if links aren’t working properly—if they don’t load correctly or have some other issue (like being hidden by pop-up blockers), then don’t click on them!

E-mails from your bank or other organization

Here are a few things to look out for when it comes to e-mail:

• Check the address of the sender. There is a lot of fake stuff online, so make sure you know who is sending you something before you open it. When in doubt, call the company and ask if they sent you an email with this subject line or mentioning these details.
• Check their grammar and spelling. If it looks like someone put in minimal effort to write out a message that has misspelled words and run-on sentences (or no periods), chances are they aren’t very professional when it comes to security either!
• Look at the content of what they’re asking from you—is it reasonable? Does it make sense? Does this person have something important enough for me to type my password into their website? If not, delete!

Being safe online is very important.

You may feel safe on the internet, but there are many risks you need to be aware of. Be careful about what you give out online: don’t provide your name or address, bank details and credit card details unless you are confident that it is a legitimate website.

Don’t open attachments from emails from people you don’t know; they could contain viruses that could infect your computer and steal information stored on it.

Be careful when clicking on links in emails; some sites try to trick users by creating fake websites that look like real ones (e.g., eBay). Always check that the address bar shows the correct website address before visiting any website using a link in an email (the address bar usually appears at the top of web browser windows). If you have any doubts about whether or not an email is genuine then delete it without opening it or forwarding it onto anyone else!

I hope you have learned a lot from this article, and will be able to protect yourself from these dangerous activities. It’s important that we all take care of ourselves when we are online. As always, we appreciate calls with questions from our valued clients. Better to answer questions, than clean up a mess. Call Agile Computer today at 437-888-0111 to see how we can help keep you protected!