Suspicious Email?

I thought I might pass this along.....

I received an email from "Denny Smith" who wanted to know more about my Rpod awning. I did not open the email and deleted it.

1. There is no member here with that member name.
2. How did this person get my personal email address? The email did NOT come via the "private mail" function of this forum.

Be careful about what you open. If it does not come through the private mail or you do not know the sender, use caution. You may get something more than you want (like a virus, ransomeware, etc.)

If you are using Thunderbird for your email, here are a few tips:

Message filters are your friends. Make them and use them to filter the email. Look for the Tools and select Message Filters. Here is where you create the filters.
The first filter to create is one for addresses. Set it up so that any message not in your personal or collected addresses gets marked as "junk" and moved to the junk message folder. Initially, a lot of valid emails will end up here until you add the sender to your address book. It filters out most of the garbage.
While you are at it, create a filter to mark any message coming from you as junk and send it to the junk folder also. You are not usually in the habit of sending messages to yourself, are you? Spammers can and do fake your address as the "from" address.
If you create different folders for different subjects, such as R-Pod, Smoking Meat, or family members, you can create filters here to sort the messages into those folders. You would not mark those as junk.

Second, if you are using Thunderbird and you do get a message that you are not sure of, don't open it normally. highlight it and hit CTRL-U instead. That will open up a text view of the message source. In it, you can see all sorts of information such as who sent it. If you use web tools like Central Ops, you can even find out if the message purporting to come from someone originates with that person, or is a faked email sent from China, Vietnam, Russia, Romania, etc. That does take a bit of understanding on how email works though. This way of viewing the message is safe since it is viewing the source and there are no active links or any way for any possible malware to execute.

Last, you could ditch Windows and run a Linux distribution (Mint is nice for beginners). Linux is not subject to Windows malware. If you do not have any special programs that require Windows to run, this is a good option.

Someone say fishing?

Originally posted by Leo B Someone say fishing?

Well....if you come to the Hoosier State, bring your ice auger! Snow today and single digit lows for the next couple of days.

Originally posted by David It seems like that stuff is on the increase. I've been getting a lot more lately - 3 from "FedEx" having a problem delivering a package. 1. My front porch is still there. 2. The real FedEx doesn't have my email address 3. Hovering the curser over the sender reveals a sender other than FedEx. 4. I have nothing coming from FedEx. And many more...... I've not used Linux but, the folks that do seem to like it. I got Windows 10 "forced" on me, a while back. I would daily close the nagware message "You really should upgrade, while it is still free". After a few months, this became routine. Well, the last message must have read "If you don't immediately throw your PC out the window and blow it up, we're going to upgrade you - like it or not". The next thing I knew, my PC was shutting down.... I may yet go back to 7. IMHO, Windows peaked with XP and it's been downhill since.

My most recent emails have been about "secure document delivery". "please click the attachment to retrieve your document". I'm not expecting any document delivery. Umm, no. I'm not to going to infect my computer with your virus.

LOL on your porch still being there! I've had more than one experience where my porch was still there, my car was in the driveway, and I was home expecting a package that needed a signature, only to step outside to find one of those yellow "sorry we missed you" stickers on my front door. Hey buddy - my doorbell works and you never knocked!