More dangerous e-mails

[ahinton]

Not being IT literate I delete from the Inbox and then delete again from the deleted items, is this safe practice?

It is, as long as you do so with any attachments remaining unopened but, as I mentioned upthread, it's probably best to consign them to the email spam folder (if you have one) first and then delete them from there before deleting them from your deleted items folder.

I used to get stacks of these but for the past three years or so I get very few, presumably because my email spam detection facility (that comes with my McAfee package) blocks most of them and puts a few more straight into my email spam or junk folders rather than the inbox.

[french frank]

I've just received the following. Should I download the attached document?

"Dear Customer,

We're constantly working to make Btinternet more professional, simpler and more convenient for our customers.
We will proceed update all our customers informations, and we will disable all accounts appear to be inactive.
Please help us to improve our services by giving your accurate information that will help us later in our project to improve our services.
1- Download the attached document and open it in a secure browser.
2- Follow the verification process and give us your correct information.
Our new verification measures have been put in place in 2014 to protect our customer's.
This check is done only once and will not be required on the future."

If only all decisions were that easy ...

[LeMartinPecheur]

I've just received the following. Should I download the attached document?

"Dear Customer,

We're constantly working to make Btinternet more professional, simpler and more convenient for our customers.
We will proceed update all our customers informations, and we will disable all accounts appear to be inactive.
Please help us to improve our services by giving your accurate information that will help us later in our project to improve our services.
1- Download the attached document and open it in a secure browser.
2- Follow the verification process and give us your correct information.
Our new verification measures have been put in place in 2014 to protect our customer's.
This check is done only once and will not be required on the future."

If only all decisions were that easy ...

ff: presumably you reckon the highlighted excrescent apostrophe is the giveaway?

Possibly one for Pedant's Paradise, but how long will it be before the standard of English throughout this message becomes commensurate with that from legitimate sites?

[french frank]

ff: presumably you reckon the highlighted excrescent apostrophe is the giveaway?

Yes, I scoured the rest of the message for other clues but they did a pretty good job, I reckon, only about seven other obvious mistakes They'd obviously cut and pasted the download instructions from someone else's phishing expedition.

[PJPJ]

AAAAAGH!

"Dear Customer" is suspicious for a start. I've had BT emails in the past which weren't, but looked pretty good with all the correct graphics. If it really is from BT and you have an account with them, the mail will begin "Dear French Frank".

You may find these scam emails purporting to be from BT, Amazon and so on, are sent to you and, it will say somewhere, 10 or so others, whose names will be similar to yours, so Fresh Frank, Fresh France, Francis Frick, Francesca Flick.

I had a scam one yesterday purportedly from someone I have been in touch with but haven't seen since 1962 - no subject, and just a suspicious link.

I've just received the following. Should I download the attached document?

"Dear Customer,

We're constantly working to make Btinternet more professional, simpler and more convenient for our customers.
We will proceed update all our customers informations, and we will disable all accounts appear to be inactive.
Please help us to improve our services by giving your accurate information that will help us later in our project to improve our services.
1- Download the attached document and open it in a secure browser.
2- Follow the verification process and give us your correct information.
Our new verification measures have been put in place in 2014 to protect our customer's.
This check is done only once and will not be required on the future."

If only all decisions were that easy ...

[Hornspieler]

Not being IT literate I delete from the Inbox and then delete again from the deleted items, is this safe practice?

The simpler way is to hold down the shift key and press the delete button on your keyboard. That will wipe the document completely from your computer. Don't risk poluting other messages in your "Deleted items" box by moving the document into there. That box should be kept solely for messages to which you might want to refer weeks (or months) later..

HS

[umslopogaas]

I havent had a problem with dodgy emails, but despite being on TPS I do get the occasional nuisance call. One just came, a guy with a south Asian accent: "Hallo sir, my name is David in the technical department, the Windows operating system you are using'' At that point I put the phone down, so what the purported problem with my operating system was, I'll never know, but I'm pretty sure fixing it would have allowed "David" to send me a virus.

[Serial_Apologist]

I havent had a problem with dodgy emails, but despite being on TPS I do get the occasional nuisance call. One just came, a guy with a south Asian accent: "Hallo sir, my name is David in the technical department, the Windows operating system you are using'' At that point I put the phone down, so what the purported problem with my operating system was, I'll never know, but I'm pretty sure fixing it would have allowed "David" to send me a virus.

I've had this one too, and done likewise.

[Parry1912]

I've also had that one. I told him I didn't have a computer. He hung up very quickly.

[johnb]

Well, Macs always do it better, so we hear.

I couldn't find a switch in Outlook Express to show the headers, but there may well be one hidden somewhere. As to quantity/frequency, I'm not back at home for a week or so, but at that time I should be able to give an approximate rate by looking at my main PC.

I haven't used Outlook Express for many years as I really didn't like the way it stored the data on the hard drive (also some versions had a bad security reputation). IMO the Outlook that comes with Office is much better. Having said that - with my version of Outlook (which I use without a preview pane - highly recommended) you can see the e-mail header information in two ways. Your Outlook Express might well have similar options.

Before opening the e-mail - right click on the e-mail (in, say, your inbox list) and select "Options". The e-mail header is shown at the bottom of the panel that opens.

When viewing the e-mail - select View/Options.

Although most of the header information is gibberish to mere mortals there is information about the source and return path that can be useful.

[Don Petter]

I haven't used Outlook Express for many years as I really didn't like the way it stored the data on the hard drive (also some versions had a bad security reputation). IMO the Outlook that comes with Office is much better. Having said that - with my version of Outlook (which I use without a preview pane - highly recommended) you can see the e-mail header information in two ways. Your Outlook Express might well have similar options.

Before opening the e-mail - right click on the e-mail (in, say, your inbox list) and select "Options". The e-mail header is shown at the bottom of the panel that opens.

When viewing the e-mail - select View/Options.

Although most of the header information is gibberish to mere mortals there is information about the source and return path that can be useful.

Thanks for all that.

As I said, I'm really not worried about reporting all the baddies - life is too short. However, I have had a look at Outlook Express as you suggest.

If you right click before opening, there is no 'Options' option, but there is one for 'Properties', which under the Detail tab does indeed give all the header information. One would have to copy this and add it to the email to send on, which again is a bit of a fag compared with being able to just open up the header already attached and then forward the email.

When viewing an email, again there is no 'Options' in the View menu. (And, strangely, though I do have the 'All headers' ticked in that menu, no headers are ever visible!)

[johnb]

I seems that, these days, in Outlook Express - when viewing the email the headers should be on the File/Properties option.