Breadcrumbs
| SURVEY SAYS? Phishing for dollars |
 |
 |
 |
| Written by Amy Stinson |
| Thursday, 09 March 2006 11:13 |
|
Imagine my surprise when I got a wonderful email supposedly from Chase Bank telling me they would pay me $20 for participating in a survey. WoW! Had my ship finally arrived? Was I going to be able to sit back on my middle-aged spread and complete 5 minute surveys to pick up some extra cash? Excitedly I clicked on the link provided in the very professional-looking email and came upon a site that just wanted to ask a couple of innocent enough questions and then came the caveat: I would have to provide account information so they could deposit that $20 safely into my bank account. There's was just one catch: I don't have an account with Chase. The email wasn't sent to an account that would ever interact with anyone for any reason, much less be used to do banking. This is what I do. I would suggest that you try to do something along these lines. For each of my bank accounts I have an "alias" email address that forwards to a special account just for banking. I can do that because I have my own email servers. jost of you won't be able to do that. However, jost of you do have access to more than one POP 3 email account through your ISP. I don't recommend using "free" (as in yahoo, hotmail, or gmail) accounts to do business that involves giving credit card information or banking information. I want my information someplace where I can pull it off and encrypt it from prying eyes. Free accounts just don't give me that warm, fuzzy feeling. I do suggest you set up a "banking" email account through your ISP and use that account to receive banking notifications. Use another email account when you pay for things online. Don't use those accounts for any other purpose and keep the mail that comes to those accounts OFF the ISP's server and IN a special folder in your email program. That way bank notifications that come to you that aren't associated with your bank-use email address can be discarded for the fakes they probably are. |
| Last Updated on Thursday, 09 March 2006 11:26 |