Beware of any emails that you get, whereby you are not either expecting the email or whereby the email presents itself with other threats . I am sharing an example:
The presentation at first looks like a real email from Amazon. After further investigation, however, the email goes on to threaten cutting off your services by not responding to the email. Then to make matters worse, the email elaborates to ask for pertinent personal information…data that Amazon would never need for you to verify with them by way of an email, telling you that there is a security risk. Then, finally, the email states that after a certain amount of time, that the account will somehow establish a status of not being able to be used, and gives a cut-off date to do action or lack of action on your part. All of the above factors are psychologically what touches your buttons to make you think wrong and dial up your impulsive action–thereby taking action to hit their response button in the email, whereby all sorts of damage can be done. Damage for them to get your personal information. The best thing you can do in this or any case whereby you get a letter like the below letter, is:
- Never act on impulse, make sure that any received email is well thought of before your response is rendered
- If the email looks suspicious, do not open any attachments: sometime the attachments–even a photo, can install Trojan horses or other viruses onto your computer and literally obtain personal information after you open it, without your knowledge or consent, and at a later time and/or date
- Just log into your account, do not open your account from the email–use a bookmarked entry into your account
- Check the account balances
- Make sure that there hasn’t been any use of your account
- Check your account notifications from administrators
- Check your personal emails for other emails from the store of account whereby you think that you received an email from
- After identifying that the email might be from an invalid source, check what email the threatening email is from. Go to the home page of the destination URL of the email. If it is out of a G-mail, Yahoo or other conglomerate email carrier, find the “Show Original” selection on the menu for your email carrier. Read the results, the copy will show some type of result. As in my case, I use G-mail. I always identify myself and on my web page, I have a home page and an about page. I do not hide who I am for any reason. Most valid and trusted businesses always have an “about” page somewhere on the web site identifying how to get in touch with the and “contact” information. Make sure that the contact information matches up with the suspicious email. Do business with companies that identify themselves completely so that you never , ever give personal information from an email that you receive, unless you contacted the company in the first place, and/or are expecting the email because of action you previously invoked. If you feel that the email is phishing for your information. report it accordingly. Don’t just report it as spam. Report it as “phishing” because being spam is not officially a crime, phishing is a misdemeanor or a felony depending on the criteria. If you have suffered a monetary loss:
- Call your police department’s non-emergency number or go to your local police station and report it to obtain a police report number
- Launch remedial activity to try to minimize loss:
- Report the loss to the company where monetary loss happened
- If credit or debit card information is stolen, report them to the fraud department of the card and get a new card sent immediately so that the credit card deactivates further use of the cards
- File a dispute report to the credit cards where losses are displayed
- Make sure that in the phishing report of the original email, that you let the email company that there was monetary loss so that the company can possibly assist in getting pertinent information
As in the above email that was shared by a friend of mine from a very reputable source, the Oak Forest Police Association’s Facebook Page. I am on the side to defend the local police, because–just like the above post, more than 99% of the time, the police are on the citizen’s side. Without the police, everyone is at risk of crime up to and including violence. Unless you are in a upper class where you can afford your own on-site security and also not worry about insurance reporting, police are crucial for everyone to be able to call on in time of need because of criminal activity. Also mind that without police, after the crime is over, you cannot even call your insurance company to file a claim without a police report number. You also cannot report an issue to revert a charge on your credit card if they phish for that personal information and use your credit cards, or in this case if they were to use your Amazon account, you would need that police report number in order for Amazon to be able to help assist you in possible reversal of any charges rendered. My gratitude goes out to both the Oak Forest Police Department which patrol where my business is, and the Aurora Illinois Police Department which patrol where my home is. They both conduct business very professionally and put their hearts and souls into a job that most of us would never like to do. Making our lives a safe place to live responsibly! Thank you for the awesome work and effort!
