A few months ago, I received a very cleverly disguised email “from Citibank” with a link to update my records. The link url looked very “safe” https:, even. And I have a Citibank account, but of course I know better. I looked at the source of the html to see what url is truly there and of course it was something totally different. It was the same day that CNN had an article on “phishing” scams, which this was. I sent the email (with the url etc) stripped out to family and friends along with the url of the CNN article warning them that this stuff looks SO valid, but not to be fooled. I also told them that a good practice was to copy and paste the urls’ into their browser rather than clicking on the links.

Now Earthlink is attempting (this has the same photo as the previous article and looks like you haven’t gotten a new page, but you have…) to help their customers by building a list of fraudulent websites. When the earthlink customer clicks on the link, if it is on “the list” – they will be redirected. I can’t see how this is working – maybe through Earthlink’s web based email or through their own email client application. Earthlink was getting 40,000 calls and emails a month about these emails. It will be interesting to see what they come up with and if it is successful.

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