College of Health and Human Development

John LaFreniere, HHD Technical Support

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We get them all the time, emails that offer promises of instant riches, or rebates on products we buy every day. Sounds too good to be true? It is. It's a scam.

Some scams are so transparent we can recognize them right off the bat, but some are a little more sophisticated.

Wouldn’t it be great if all dangerous email and webpage scams came with warnings like this:

• Clicking this link will mess up your computer!
• Installing this software will knock you off the internet!
• I will steal your money, even if you’re sick and need it for medicine!

Since internet scams are designed by criminals who make money (or just mayhem) by tricking you into infecting your own computer, instead of telling the truth they create pop-ups or send email messages that look harmless at first glance (or pop-up!):

• Your computer is infected with a virus. Click here to fix your computer.
  (Translation: “Clicking this link will mess up your computer!”)
• Your computer can work faster by installing this simple software.
  (Translation: “Installing this software will give me full control of your computer!”)
• You’ve won the UK Lottery; or, help me get my exiled grandfather's millions out of my country, and I’ll give you half of it.
  (Translation: “I will steal your money, and you'll never even know who I was!”)
• 'Click here' to be removed from all future mailings [applies to email from strangers].
  (Translation: “When you click this link, I’ll know you are a real person and I’ll be able to sell your email address for even more money than I paid for it!)
• Work from home and make $$$ with google/ebay/etc!
  (Translation: "When you send me money to receive the "valuable!" (read: worthless) information I'm offering, I’ll be the one getting rich!”)

The vast majority of “malware” (the new term for virus-like software) that makes its way onto campus computers is installed by the users themselves after being tricked into clicking on something they shouldn’t. Protect yourself by learning to recognize a scam.

©2010 John LaFreniere, reprinted with permission from the author.