Many services require account verification via email or another channel. Unfortunately, scammers have exploited this setup, most famously in a series of phishing emails claiming to be from Amazon. Carefully read every email and look for the tell-tale signs of a scam, including typos, lengthy sender email addresses and urgent calls to action.

Many phishing scams involve the phisher posing as a major retailer and then sending emails claiming to contain coupons that you redeem by clicking them in an email. To stay safe, never click on one of these offers if it seems to good to be true, comes from a long/garbled email address or is contained in a […]

Here are some tip-offs that can alert you to a phishing email: Misspellings; grammatical mistakes; including your email address in the subject line; no acknowledgement of your name; requests to verify your account; warnings that your account has been compromised. Spotting these can reduce the risk of being a phishing email victim. Total Defense is […]

There’s a common technique of sending direct mail disguised as courts summons or other official documentation, to make a response more likely. Many phishing emails take basically the exact same approach, only in digital form. That is, they might use all-caps subject lines (e.g., “URGENT:”) to make it seem like action is required. It isn’t. […]

In our year-end roundup of the worst malware threats of 2017, we compared malware to actual biological viruses, in that both are ever-evolving phenomena. For example, you know how it’s recommended for certain demographics to get a flu shot every year?  The rationale is simple: The flu virus itself is never identical from year to year, meaning that […]

Email attachments are risky. They might contain malware, or be so large that they eat up too much space in your inbox. The best approach is to not open them and delete them, unless they come from a trusted sender. Encourage your contacts to share via cloud links instead.