These malware crooks are typically three steps ahead of everybody else, and it’s been more common to create a new insidious way to get your information via relevant news headlines sent to your email box. And this year, it went to an ironic level in using the story of President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize to make the next victims of online identity theft.
Of course, this leads to a quandary for the innocent who share countless email links with their online friends about major news headlines. The internet seems to be turning into nothing but a constant minefield, with seemingly no way to determine which news headline email is safe and which isn’t. It doesn't help when the sharing of news online is an ingrained part of everyday life in most homes and offices.
But there are ways to defend against this, even though it requires an astute ability to weed out the real from the nefarious.
Ask friends to send you headline news stories with a personal identifier in the subject line
While a lot of work when you have hundreds of friends online, sending a mass request to please put an identifier in the email subject line when sending news links shouldn’t be considered unnecessary. However, out of courtesy, someone sending a news link should automatically place something personal in the email subject line so friends will know it’s from them and not someone installing malware on your computer. Although placing your name in the subject line doesn't always work when phishers can sometimes obtain and use your name or someone else's to make it look convincing.
Unfortunately, we’ve been living in a culture where seeing a hot story headline in your email box incites an automatic click without thinking about where it came from. The above-mentioned President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize story was one of the most powerful examples of being fooled to date.
To add a new layer to the automatic click, the above permeated email promised that it would download a story onto one’s computer to give details about members of the populace against the Obama Peace Prize win.
