Internet Marketing Basics

It's been another hectic week, working the home business forums looking for interviewees has taken up most of my time. I've had tons of people offering to take part, and already had 7 of them send me their interviews. The aim is 25, then if possible I might just decide to go for 50, depending on how long it actually takes ;)

In my travels around the internet marketing forums this week, I noticed a lot of people were having problems with emails they were receiving from places like Paypal, Ebay and various online banks. The amount of phishing that's going on these days is almost incredible, what's worse is that so few people are actually aware of it, so I sat myself down and wrote an article in the hopes of helping a few more people avoid being scammed.

How To Spot A Fraudulent Email
By Anna-Marie Stewart

Have you been receiving supsicious looking emails from Paypal, telling you that your account is about to be closed or limited due to suspicious activites being registered by their staff?

It`s definitely a phishing scam where people are out to fool you into giving them your info. Looking at the code, or headers will usually reveal anonymous urls, especially numbered ones, or urls that are definitely not pointing to paypal.

The 3 Dead Giveaways:

A). The email isn`t addressed to you personally, but says "Dear customer". Paypal, and all other banks will always address you by name in their mails to you.

B). Ask around a bit, and you`ll hear of others who`ve had the exact same messages. This is because the phishing is going on in mass mailings to thousands of people at a time.

C). I don`t know about other email programs, but if you`re using Outlook Express, you can usually see the REAL website address by running your mouse over the one in the email. It`ll show up right at the bottom of your Outlook Express. Another way to check is by checking the headers of the email. This is quite easy to do, although not many people seem to be aware of it. Here`s a quick step-by-step:

1. Click once on the subject line of the mail in question to highlight it.
2. Right click the subject and choose Properties
3. Click on Details
4. Click on Message Source

This will show you every single detail of the mail, all the HTML code, all the headers, where the mail originated and a whole lot more. Once you`ve checked all that, just close the source.

All in all this will probably take up 2 minutes of your time but can definitely save you thousands of pounds, dollars or whichever currency you use, so make it a habit to "deep-check" any suspicious mails that you`re unsure of.

Pleas note that A lot of ebay emails are going around like this too, telling you that your account is about to be suspended. You might also notice a lot of emails supposedly coming from banks like Citibank. I get at least 3 or 4 of EACH every day.

Should you EVER receive anything like this, please deep-check and report to the main websites. Never click the links in the mails. Open a new browser window and TYPE IN the web-address, making sure you include https:// so that you get to their secure pages.

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