personal information

By Aysë Stenabaugh

Unfortunately, scammers are finding new and clever ways to trick unsuspecting users into providing access to sensitive personal information. The most common methods continue to be via emails, phone calls, and sometimes text messages. It can sometimes be difficult to determine which ones to take seriously and which ones to ignore. At Jester’s Computer Services we hear of just about every new scam that comes along. Read on to learn a few tips to help you spot a few common scams, how to protect yourself and what to do if you do find yourself involved with one.

Amazon has become a frequent target – scammers know how many people use the retail giant and they’re using it to their advantage. The most common Amazon scams typically involve an emailed purchase confirmation for an item that you clearly did not purchase which will also be addressed to a physical delivery address that is not yours. This is an example of phishing and emails like these, as well as similar emails from Amazon (and other businesses and online retailers) that warn you of “fraudulent activity” or other account concerns should be investigated but with caution.

If you receive a notice for a purchase that you don’t recognize or if you are ever asked to click a link including to verify your account security, pause and be on alert for the following indicators of a scammer. First, check the email address that the email is From, not just the name itself. Be sure to check on the full @xyz.com address and pay extra CLOSE attention to subtle misspellings. An email from Amazon or any other big organization is not going to be coming from a public domain like Gmail or Yahoo, they should come from amazon.com for example. Second, if the email contains an attachment, you can almost bet it’s a scam, definitely don’t open any attachments! Third, you can check the “reply-to” email address and ensure that it matches the from address. If all three check out you can still visit the website in question directly rather than via any links within the email. If the notification is legitimate, you should be able to locate the notice from within your account on their website.

The same concept applies if you were to receive a phone call from “Amazon” or any other individual who calls that wishes for you to provide personal information including but not limited to; your address, date of birth, social security number, or a code obtained from a website or software in order to provide remote access to your device. Instead, hang up the phone, do not provide the caller with any information, or engage in conversation with them. If you are concerned that the call is potentially legitimate the caller should understand if you tell them that you will call them back at a more convenient time. Do not call the number back that called you or any phone number that the caller may have provided. Instead, find a verified phone number to reach the company by using a billing statement, by using a quality search engine such as Google or, by finding the contact information on their website. Even if a caller comes up with a legitimate Name and OR phone number, they could be a scammer.

Comcast users have been a huge target for scammers as of late. Their latest trick once they gain access to your email account via a compromised password is to forward all of your emails to a new email address with the same username but a different domain, usually outlook.com. For example, if your email address was abc@comcast.net the email address the scammer would create to forward your emails to would be abc@outlook.com. In addition to doing this, the scammers are creating a filter rule which redirects any new emails to your correct email address into the inbox and is deleted. As a user, you may notice that you stop receiving emails all together or you might notice that only your usual contacts aren’t responding to your emails at all. What the scammers are actually doing is emailing your contacts in an attempt to extort them for money. They don’t do so in an obvious way. They might for example, request that the email recipient send a gift card to them as a favor since you’re out of town and need to get a birthday gift for a family member. If you notice this happening to you change your email password right away and notify your contacts NOT to respond to the email. If they have already, ask them to change their password and inform them that they too should notify their contacts.

To be clear none of the above indicate that any security breach to your device has occurred unless you have given someone access to your device, clicked on a link or if you opened a malicious attachment. Anyone can access your email account from anywhere if they have the email address and password as is the case in the Comcast scam mentioned above. Comcast users should also note that any emails received from a comcast.net email account are NEVER correspondence from Comcast themselves. All emails from Comcast the company will come from a comcast.com email address.

If you have been the victim of a scam, Jesters Computers can help; whether you require a Cleanup of your device, advice, or one-on-one support. Contact Jester’s Computers located in Fairfield by calling or texting 717-642-6611, emailing customerservice@jesterscomputers.com, or by visiting us on the web on Facebook or www.jesterscomputers.com