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Preview the Email you are reading

Written by: Albert Whale

Article Overview: Many of us are guilty of simply clicking on the links that come in our Email. This is just the behavior that the Hackers are expecting. By taking a few seconds, we can intelligently scan a new mail message and determine whether or not it is a genuine message worthy of clicking on the link withing, and potentially exposes you to unwanted threats and computer attacks.

Preview the Email you are reading

The next time you read your Email, please take a second to preview the websites BEFORE you visit them!

More often than not you have probably received an email message with a link to a web site on it. How many times have you just clicked the link to see what was there?

I'm going to bet that almost all of you reading this (and probably MOST of your friends) just click the link to see what is next. Is this true?

Do you know who else is betting that you do? The Hackers are. Because they know that you are curious to see what is there. (This is probably as easy as 'shooting fish in a barrel')

Using human curiosity against us is a form of Social Engineering meant to infect you, your computer, and possibly also get personal information from you, without your knowing it.

So the Bad Guys (the Hackers), know how to get you to come to them. You see if you, if you come to them, then it is easier for them to attack you, without your knowing. They can infect you through customized programming that avoids your Virus Scanner.

So, the hackers have an advantage, and now we can begin to show you how to protect yourself. It is going to take only a moment of your time, but you will need to stop the current behavior of just clicking every web link you receive in email.

First of all, these lessons require the Thunderbird Mail Reader. Since I have only used Thunderbird for reading email, I will not be able to answer questions about Microsoft Outlook, as I do not recommend or use this product.

The example for this lesson is in the next section, please visit the message sections as you are instructed to.

The first thing that you should do when reviewing an Email message is to validate the sender. To do this, simply pass the mouse pointer over the Words: Google Alerts (in this case this is the sender) in the From: field, you will see the address in the bottom panel of Thunderbird. In this case, you will see mailto:googlealerts-noreply@google.com

While Google Alerts may send out messages with a no reply address, not many services use this type of reply address for a legitimate email address. While this may not give you all of the information you need, sometimes reviewing the Sender’s Email address is enough to tell you that it is a bogus Email.

You can do the same with the email address in the To: field. Not surprisingly, it has the email address of Denise Richardson (after all, she did receive it).

The next link to review is the link for Denise Richardson in the Body of the message. Please do not get overwhelmed, there are two simple things I wish to explain to you.



The web link used for Denise Richardson looks like this:


http://www.google.com/url?sa=X&q=http://cyfs- byolint co cc/236.html&ct=ga&cd=K_LxQ4O06Yw&usg=AFQjCNF__CvDyQh7FOGcnj4ReQPCZ88d9A

1. The first thing that I want you to observe is that there are 2 http:// marks in the web link. This is usually an indication that the address is going to use the first site to pass information to the second site. In this case the Hacker sends their website first to Google, then to their site at cyfs- byolint co cc.

This is called Relaying. Relaying is BAD with websites, because you do not know what is going to happen. (of course the Hacker has already planned that)

2. The second thing that I want you to notice is that the domain name in the second http:// link is to byolint co.cc (I have crippled the address so that it does not work by replacing the . with a space - DO NOT GO THERE! THEY WANT TO INFECT YOU!)

Is this a Domain name that you have heard of before? It certainly is not one that is being represented for Google Alerts.

Lastly, any link should go to only one address, not through multiple hosts, or use multiple http://.

Think of it this way, none of your friends would send you a message with this matter of complexity, would they?

Finally, the Domain name (that is the name of the website after the second http://) byolint.co.cc is not registered in the WHOIS database, but the address for the website is registered for use in Frankfurt, Germany. While I needed to use separate tools to look up the owner of the website, my point is that the site is not one that you normally use.

The remaining three links in the email are valid links to pages in Google Alerts. If you have seen previous emails from Google Alerts, they would have this at the bottom of their emails as well. This is a mimic trick that the Hacker employ, this helps the Hackers by sending an email message similar in format to ones that you may be used to receiving.

While it may take extra effort to scan a message before you click on the links, the time you spend examining the different parts of the message will end up saving you from an unwanted infection in the long run.



Example message - Google Alert
We take internet security seriously. This is a sample message which was delivered to Denise Richardson (a real person, and one of our customers).

Denise is well known as a Consumer Credit Advocate. When Denise received this Email, it looked legitimate at first glance, but we will show you how to preview the links so that you don't get burnt.

In this example, the link for Denise Richardson is set to a site which will infect your machine. PLEASE DO NOT CORRECT THE LINK AND VISIT THE SITE.

----- Original Message -----
From: Google Alerts
To: deniserichardson@givemebackmycredit.com
Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 10:14 PM
Subject: Google Alert - Denise Richardson consumer advocate

Google Web Alert for: Denise Richardson consumer advocate

Denise Richardson
Denise Richardson. Consumer Advocate Denise Richardson Says You. ... Consumer advocate denise richardson says you may be surprised what s on your credit ...

This as-it-happens Google Alert is brought to you by Google.

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Article Tags: bad guys, bottom panel, email, google, googlealerts, hackers, human curiosity, mail reader, message sections, microsoft, microsoft outlook, moment of your time, mouse pointer, shooting fish in a barrel, social engineering, thunderbird mail, virus scanner, web link



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