Are you noticing more spam lately?
Hackers and spammers love to exploit a stressful situation, such as a pandemic. Follow these 7 tips to stay vigilant against spam and phishing!
- Ignore all IRS stimulus emails. I’ve personally seen plenty of “IRS” emails lately about the stimulus. Since we’re all eager to receive our stimulus check, those emails look enticing. However, the IRS says most people won’t need to take any action, so you won’t be contacted by a shady email to receive your $1,200 stimulus payment (the 2020 amount). Most stimulus-related emails are spam and phishing attempts that prey on the heightened emotions of the pandemic. Stay one step ahead by marking them as junk and deleting them. The same goes for spam about face masks, ventilators and other COVID-19 concerns. You can also report IRS phishing.
- Check the source. Who is the email really from? Sophisticated phishing attempts mimic legitimate company emails as closely as possible. The email may seem to come from the IRS, First Horizon, AT&T or Wells Fargo, but check the sender. Is the company or domain name misspelled? Malicious websites may look identical to the real thing but use a slightly different spelling or domain ending (.com versus .net). If you’re unsure, contact the company directly using the information on an account statement, not the information in the suspicious email.
- Check the grammar. Spam emails are typically full of grammar and spelling errors. A respectable company won’t send emails riddled with mistakes, so that’s an immediate red flag: mark it as junk right away. More sophisticated attempts may be error-free, so stay alert. A cleverly worded email in proper English isn’t necessarily legitimate.
- Check the links. Phishing attacks use email or malicious websites to collect personal and financial information or to infect your device with malware. Ultimately, they’re about money. A link might look legitimate, but even one letter off in the domain name is a glaring red flag. When in doubt, throw it out: if a link in an email, post or ad looks suspicious, even from a source you know, delete it or mark it as junk.
- Regularly run virus scans. Keep all software on your internet-connected devices, including computers, phones and tablets, up to date to reduce the risk of malware. On Windows, run weekly scans (for example, with Malwarebytes), use real-time protection and keep Windows Security (Defender) updated. On a Mac, keep macOS and your apps up to date.
- Mark the email as junk or spam. Most email apps let you mark or report spam, which helps keep similar messages out of your inbox. Check your spam filter settings too: set too strict, they may block emails you want (false positives), so look through your junk folder occasionally.
- Strengthen your passwords. Weak passwords are one of the easiest ways into your accounts. Try making your password a sentence: a strong passphrase is at least 12 characters long, like “I love country music.” Many sites even allow spaces. Use a different passphrase for every account, and consider a password manager like Bitwarden, so you only remember one password and can generate strong, unique ones everywhere else. Finally, turn on two-factor authentication wherever you can. A few extra seconds at each login is trivial compared to the hours it takes to recover from identity theft.
About the author
Leighton Smith is Pioneer Media’s website designer, web developer and webmaster, based in East Tennessee. As a solopreneur, he is each client’s one point of contact and has built hundreds of websites since learning to code in 2006.
