DEAR COLUMBUS TELEPHONE INTERNET CUSTOMER,
We would like to take a few minutes to review recent questions about spam and phishing email that have been circulating. It's important to know and realize what is spam, phishing email, or even virus email so that you are protected against any type of fraudulent practices that spammers commonly use.While we use one of the best know spam filters available, Postini, not all spam will ever be caught and therefore, you may get some spam that comes through to your inbox. Postini has several options to keep spam from being delivered to your inbox. The filter settings, from 1 (being lenient) to 5 (being strict) can help you in controlling what is actually delivered. If you've not been into your Postini account, you can login at http://login.postini.com and adjust your settings to your liking.
Below are a few of the more common spam and phishing email to watch for. Should you receive unwanted email, simply delete them.
As with any other transaction, unless you know who the person sending or requesting information is, do NOT assume that the request is valid. Never give any type of personal information to anyone you are not familiar with or anyone that you have not initiated contact with.
"I've got an email that is not even addressed to my email address".
When a spammers sends spam, in most cases, they will use one email address as the "TO" recipient and use the blind carbon copy option to enter the hundreds of email addresses to send the spam. This is why it appears to be going to someone else, but yet you are receiving the email.
"I'm getting a lot of undeliverable return messages for email I never sent."
Spammers can and will use any email address they have to send their spam. In the email they are sending out, they can use any email address as the "sender". By doing this, when they send the spam, any email address that doesn't exist in their list will be rejected as undeliverable. Since they used your email as the sender, that is why you end up with the hundreds of undeliverables. These will likely cease within a few days. In the meantime, you're only option is to delete them.
"I have a message from Amazon about an order that I never placed."
Email disguised as companies such as Amazon, Ebay, Paypal or even major banks should always be looked at with caution. If you've not ordered anything, are expecting anything from any such companies, the email is likely a phishing email that should be deleted.
"I received an email that says I need to fill out information or verify information from you to validate my email address. Shouldn't you already have this information?"
We will never ask for information such as social security number, personal financial information or request you do anything in an email to "activate" or continue using your mailbox. This is classic phishing email. Delete it as you would any other spam.
"How did a spammer get my email address?"
If you've ever received a forwarded email from someone and notice hundreds of other email addresses that the email has been forwarded to and from, those types of email are one place where spammers get their addresses. Other methods include companies that my "sell email addresses," which we would NEVER do.
