It’s not enough to have our e-mail boxes filled with bogus prize notifications, special deals on OEM software and little blue pills for below wholesale cost. Spammer’s are now getting even more devious.
And the potential danger of hacking your personal information has become more serious.
Like you, I constantly receive spam and e-mail phishing schemes trying to part me with my money and personal info. Most I delete. Others I find unique and different — those you may not be aware of — I post here on SpamScams.net.
Here’s where it got interesting — and scary.
This morning I opened my Calendar program to schedule some tasks and, quite by accident, discovered there were two new (unverified) event notifications. Hmm?
To my surprise, the event notifications were included in spam e-mail I received! They were invitations to unknown scheduled events AND, I almost accepted both!
LIke you, my business involves a lot of meeting s so I’m consistently sending, receiving, and accepting events (scheduled meetings). Since I’ve never come across this before, my automatic response was to accept the invite.
No longer is it as simple as spotting and deleting spam e-mail, not opening e-mail from unknown sources, and NOT opening unverified attachments. You now have to keep a very close eye on your Calendar software.
At a minimum, accepting an invitation for an event sends an acceptance reply to the sender — which VERIFIES YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS. And this is the last thing you want to do. If you think you’re getting a lot of spam now, just wait until a spammer has a valid email address.
Worse case scenario, you open your computer to be accessed and/or send personal information about yourself. I shudder at the thought.
Please be aware of calendar event notifications and who they are from. Just because spammer’s, hackers, and and phishing scheme artists are getting more devious doesn’t mean we can’t help defray them with a little smarts and conscientious effort.