Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Email hoax targets Bank of England
The usual story: email purporting to come from the bank asks you to either divulge personal details, or to download software to 'protect' you - and then you find your account emptied.
But why are users so gullible? If a letter pretending to be from your bank came through the letterbox, telling you to replace your door lock with a new one which they'd kindly enclosed, along with the key to it, wouldn't you be a little suspicious? Of course you would. So it's interesting that users are so trusting on the web (if they follow these instructions) and yet so cautious - the reason we're given for slow growth of e-commerce. Clearly there's a mixture of people out there, savvy and not so. Let's hope that we all show the right amount of caution and don't get cuaght out, or tied into too restrictive practices.
If you want to avoid such practices as much as possible, some practical help.
These will address general spam, but not scams. To reduce those, consider setting up a new email address for personal mail and giving it to your friends only, and encourage them to do the same. Never put this on a newsgroup or send a message to anyone outside your usual circle on this address, and ask them not to add it to their address books but to type it in or reply to an earlier message each time. By keeping it out of the address book and off the publically viewable part of the web, you can have relatively unspammed, secure communications with your friends and family, and converse with the wider world on your more public (and more heavily attacked) address.
And never take anything for certain that purports to be official. The web is supposed to be anarcharic anyway, so we shouldn't take too much notice of officialdom :-)
The usual story: email purporting to come from the bank asks you to either divulge personal details, or to download software to 'protect' you - and then you find your account emptied.
But why are users so gullible? If a letter pretending to be from your bank came through the letterbox, telling you to replace your door lock with a new one which they'd kindly enclosed, along with the key to it, wouldn't you be a little suspicious? Of course you would. So it's interesting that users are so trusting on the web (if they follow these instructions) and yet so cautious - the reason we're given for slow growth of e-commerce. Clearly there's a mixture of people out there, savvy and not so. Let's hope that we all show the right amount of caution and don't get cuaght out, or tied into too restrictive practices.
If you want to avoid such practices as much as possible, some practical help.
- use an ISP that has spam filtering built in on its servers - this will protect you from the most common stuff and save you money as much of the rubbish will be taken out in advance
- if you use Windows XP, turn on the persoanl firewall (default settings for it are usually fine)
- use and keep updated virus protection software
These will address general spam, but not scams. To reduce those, consider setting up a new email address for personal mail and giving it to your friends only, and encourage them to do the same. Never put this on a newsgroup or send a message to anyone outside your usual circle on this address, and ask them not to add it to their address books but to type it in or reply to an earlier message each time. By keeping it out of the address book and off the publically viewable part of the web, you can have relatively unspammed, secure communications with your friends and family, and converse with the wider world on your more public (and more heavily attacked) address.
And never take anything for certain that purports to be official. The web is supposed to be anarcharic anyway, so we shouldn't take too much notice of officialdom :-)
(c) 2003-2005 Russell Beale
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