LocalMommy.com

Email Security and Scams

15th November, 2008 - Posted by LocalMommy -

We all have received an email at one time or another telling us of some great offer or tip that sound too good to be true but it goes on to tell you that it really is legitimate because some famous person, lawyer, reporter, doctor, or some other Professional that most people would trust has stated that it is in fact true.  Sometimes they will tell you of a story that was run in a national newspaper or it was on a major news network and so forth.  I receive

these on occasion now and then, but I actually received one today from a reader that frequents LocalMommy.com.  She also sent it to many more of her friends as I could see in the “To:” section of the email.  If you receive and email that you think is potentially “too good to be true” (which it probably is) then fortunately help is out there.  There are a few great websites out there but the one that I always use is Snopes.com. It debunks these false emails and also confirms those that are true.  They even have areas that are about your average run of the mill “Urban Legends”…….You know…..Like “Cry Baby Bridge” and the likes.  Just go to their site and copy and paste some of the meat and potatoes of the email into their search area and you should easily get your answer.  I hope this helps because nobody wants to be “fooled”.  Bonus information……When I spoke of the email and the “To:” address section, I thought I would also give a tip on privacy.  Sometimes we want to send an email to ALL of our friends but don’t want to give out ALL of our friends email addresses.  I was able to hit “Reply all” and sent an email to the sender as well as the many email addresses in the “To:” section.  If you for some reason would like to keep some friends emails private there is a “CC:” section which stands for “Carbon Copy” which will just carbon copy to that recipient as well as leave their addresses available also…..Then there is the wonderful “Bcc:” section…..this stands for “Blind Carbon Copy”….putting your friends email address in Bcc will keep it private, it does not matter how many addresses are in the Bcc, they will all be hidden.  What the receiver of the email will see if you’ve sent addresses in Bcc is “Undisclosed Recipients”. Just thought I’d throw that little tip in as well…..a 2 for 1 you might say.

R/

Todd