Why You Get Phished

[ithurtswhenipee]

Is this study from 2002 or something? Who doesn't know this stuff by now?

 

[surfer1337dude]

Im sorry to tell you this (I didnt read all of the comments so idk if someone else has corrected you yet) but it is University at Buffalo, not of.

Also this seems like a waste of time/money by the schools....

 

[ravewulf]

I'm pretty much a lurker on most sites and I have a dedicated spam account that I use for signing up for user accounts on sites. Both of those keep me relatively safe from spam on my main accounts.

And LOL @ the spam that is (or was, depending on how fast it is removed) above my comment on an article about spam.

 

[virtualban]

[citation][nom]wild9[/nom]..and you needed a University study to tell you this? What next: walking in a park significantly increases your chance of treading in dog sh*t?![/citation]
[citation][nom]doive1231[/nom]Did they all send each other spam to find out?[/citation]
My thumbs up for the lolz



[citation][nom]wiyosaya[/nom]IMHO, use a service like www.sneakemail.com It lets you create an e-mail address for any purpose, then forwards e-mail received at that address to your "real" e-mail. The number of e-mail addresses that you can create is unlimited. If you get spam on any one, you can delete just that address. IMHO, works great.[/citation]
[citation][nom]ravewulf[/nom]I'm pretty much a lurker on most sites and I have a dedicated spam account that I use for signing up for user accounts on sites. Both of those keep me relatively safe from spam on my main accounts.And LOL @ the spam that is (or was, depending on how fast it is removed) above my comment on an article about spam.[/citation]
I use www.mailinator.com for these purposes. Works great, no need to check and sign up. I just give the site whatever@mailinator.com and go to mailinator and check the "whatever" account that just gets created when the first mail reaches there and stays for a couple of hours. And if the site needs a new address, I go whatever20110412@mailinator.com or something unique based on date so I don't have to think about what new address can I get.

 

[virtualban]

[citation][nom]K2N hater[/nom]Dumb research. Let's talk statistics.... the more you use your email the more likely your address will be obtained by spammers.The causes are1) spamming bots (in general viruses which are able to read contacts and then disclosing all contacts of the infected host);(2) information leak on service host (some company or internet service which requested your email as a term of service might leak personal data at a certain point or even sell it for money);(3) public mail (whoever chooses to make one's mail address visible for any reason will eventually have to deal with hundreds of unwanted mail every day).[/citation]
I have found out that no mater how much I try to teach people to use BCC when they mass forward mail, and to be kind and remove the previous mass forward lists, people still use TO or CC. They "nod in understanding" when I try to teach them, but eventually stop sending me forwards on funny things they found out (or those "send it to 25 friends" mail forwards) instead of actually learning. Those lists tend to grow huge and are made of people who use their e-mail addresses. Let one of the recipients be malevolent or spammer and there, a bunch of people gullible probably and that will be reading the spam and fall for it maybe.

The worst type of mass e-mail of harvesting e-mail addresses: "send it to all your friends and to xx@yy.com and for every mail sent there, ZZ company will give 0.01 c to that cancer sick girl/boy and their family".
*sighs*

 

[x3style]

a person's competency with computing did not protect them from phishing scams

What!? You guys must have a really really low level at which you call someone competent in computing.
Someone who is called competent in computing knows from a mile away to look at where links in emails go before you click them, read the full email headers and backtrack sender's ip, and look at the domains links go to, if you are asked sensitive information, and above all you never ever send unencrypted mails with sensitive information, if you ever send it.

 

[aaron88_7]

I think you guys are stupid for not accepting the King of Africa's incredible offer. He just e-mailed me and said my check for 800 trillion dollars is in the mail. Now who's stupid??

 

[virtualban]

[citation][nom]x3style[/nom]What!? You guys must have a really really low level at which you call someone competent in computing.Someone who is called competent in computing knows from a mile away to look at where links in emails go before you click them, read the full email headers and backtrack sender's ip, and look at the domains links go to, if you are asked sensitive information, and above all you never ever send unencrypted mails with sensitive information, if you ever send it.[/citation]
Someone who uses e-mail every day as part of the job but still can't tell spam and clicks on links like that, *sighs*, best not carry on their genes to the next generation.
p.s. my sigh is because it won't happen.

 

[virtualban]

[citation][nom]doped[/nom]MORAL OF STORY. Ask any woman you know to draw, just a stick version, of a bicycle, chain connected to pedals and wheel. She wont be able to do it.[/citation]
While there are many women I know that are better than many men I know at technical things, they are still an extremely small percentage exception to the average women. Moral of my story: even though I don't like gender prejudice, statistically it stands as you say.

 

[virtualban]

There was another post here, or am I wrong?
@doped
There is something wrong in this thread, I guess in the bombardment from spam, the moderators might have deleted your post, maybe some false positive, maybe just did not like the opinion