Randem Systems Support Board

More and more people are being caught by scammers these days. It is really easy to determine if you have been sent a real invoice or payment notification about your credit card or account or even a tech support scam. Here are some ways to detect a scam.

1 - The first thing that you do is to look at the FROM field on the email. If the email address is from a FREE email account such as gmail.com, yahoo.com, outlook.com or aol.com; IT IS A SCAM!!!. No legitimate company will use a FREE email account. The company will for example PayPal will send from a domain of paypal.com, Microsoft will send from the domain microsoft.com and so on...

2 - Obvious misspelled words in the email. No legit company would send out unchecked emails.

3- If you have an account with the company in question they will address the email to you personally. They will not use Dear Customer or Dear Subscriber etc...

4 - If you viewed or clicked on a link in the email; check the url (the place at the top of your browser where https: or http is displayed). It should also have the company domain name at the beginning of it before the first slash (IE. paypal.com, microsoft.com). If it has some other destination address, it is a fraudulent web page you will be going to so do not trust it!

5 - Do not go to any website you are told to go to or call any number to fix the issue. you will just give remote control of your computer to the scammers, then they will ask you to log onto your bank account or PayPal account which will give them access to your finances and they can capture your username and password to your account.

Call your local computer professional and ask questions. Do not give control to someone who you do not know and will never meet!