And by follies, I’m not talking about musicals. Instead, I’m talking about the Merriam-Webster definition of folly.
- Lack of good sense or normal prudence and foresight;
- Criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct;
- An excessively costly or unprofitable undertaking.
Once you are on their spoofed website, malicious sites may encourage you to enter your banking or credit card information along with personal information and passwords. Don’t be fooled by these attempts to gain access to your personal information. Many of these sites look exactly like the real thing, but they are not.
So a best practice is to never click on a link in an email that appears to be from your bank or credit card company. Instead, close your email and open your browser. Then you can login to your normal bank or credit card account. If there are no messages there, you can be sure the email you received was a malicious attempt to gain access to your personal or banking information, and you can delete the email.
Another option: if you want to see where the link will go after you click on it, you can hover your mouse over the link and pause so it shows the full path you’re going to. If it doesn’t have the correct domain name in the path, don’t go to it.
If the hyperlink is a picture, right-click on the picture and then left-click on the menu item “inspect.” A bunch of technical gibberish will pop-up with the link highlighted. This will show the full path of where you’ll be going if the link is clicked. If you use the Chrome browser, the links will also show up at the very bottom of the browser window.
So to avoid the Fall Follies I mentioned at the beginning of this email:
- Use good sense and foresight. (Don’t browse while tired or distracted)
- Don’t let the criminally minded take advantage of you. (Scams phishing, smishing smartphone text fraud, malware, or browser extension redirection)
- So you don’t have an excessively costly or unprofitable undertaking.
All the best and stay well,
Jim Nay
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