{"id":5552,"date":"2021-04-07T09:05:24","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T13:05:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.4kcc.com\/blog\/?p=5552"},"modified":"2021-04-07T09:05:24","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T13:05:24","slug":"they-still-exist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.4kcc.com\/blog\/2021\/04\/07\/they-still-exist\/","title":{"rendered":"They Still Exist"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"still<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

The 1967 movie starred George C. Scott and Michael Sarrazin (may they both R.I.P.) and was about a confidence man who defrauded people in the South. Appropriately, it was titled “The Flim-Flam Man.” While we rarely hear the term in this computer day and age, flim-flam men (and women) still exist. In fact, they are alive and well. Let’s look at some examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fake<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\"Fake<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\"Fake<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n
\"Fake<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The four emails above are ones I received in the last two days. These are all examples of Social Engineering<\/a><\/strong> – real attempts to trick me into doing something stupid. In the screen captures I created, I showed part of the URL that appeared when I held my mouse over the button or link that the email tried to get me to use. (I whited-out some of the address so no one reading this post would attempt to go to the actual site.) The fact that none of the addresses in the pop-up window show legitimate web page addresses is the number one clue these emails are fake. The second tell-tale sign is that none of the four emails use my name in the salutation. They used “Dear User,” “Dear Customer,” “Dear Valued Customer,” and an email address. The final element that’s off in these engineering attempts is the “From” email address. Only the ADP email even comes close to a legitimate domain for the companies represented. I mean, think about it, would American Express be sending an email from a school in Virginia?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since I’m pointing these things out to you, it’s easy to see these emails are fakes, isn’t it? (By the way, you can click on each email if you want to see a larger image.) Here’s the problem, though. If we fall victim to the first things we see when we get these kinds of emails, we’re in trouble. All of these emails attempt to appeal to our emotions to get us to click or tap where we should not. Generally, all four use fear in an attempt to panic us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n