- A sneaky new type of email scam
- Tip from next door – Georgia’s shortcuts
- The best e-cards I’ve seen
Hello
February already – it’s hard to believe! I hope you’ve avoided all the colds and suchlike that have been flying around. I more or less had… and then got caught by a stinking cold (which stopped me recording videos for a week or two. Otherwise it would have sounded like I had a clothes peg on my nose!
Luckily enough it’s gone now so I can get back too it, but it’s pushed it back by a week or so. Still, thanks to everyone to email me after the last newsletter to say it sounded interesting – you’ve definitely given me a boost to get them finished!
Anyway, for this time, I’ve got a tip from Georgia, a great website for “e-cards” and news on a new email scam to beware of.
A very sneaky email scam…
This one is a bit different – what the scammers are doing is breaking into people’s Hotmail or Yahoo accounts. Then they can not only send emails that seem to be from you, they can send it to everyone in your address book – and because your friends think the email is from you, they’re more likely to trust it.
For example, you can see the kind of email you get here:
…and so on. This one is a bit of a give-away if you’re from the UK as the address to send the money to was in London but it says the person is in Wales! But no doubt there’ll be other variations.
So what to do? Well, first of all, keep your antivirus/security software up to date. That’ll make it much harder for anyone to hack into your email account. Secondly, if you get an email like the above, chances are it’s a scam. But you can contact the person it seems to be from to check. Not by email (remember that the scammers have access to the email account – so they’ll reply to say “yes it is me”) but by phone. And if your email address does get hacked, let everyone in your address book know straight away, so they know to be wary if an email like this reaches them.
(By the way, feel free to forward this email on to your friends – the more people who know about this kind of scam the fewer people will be “had”)
Tip from Next Door – this one’s from Georgia
As you know if you’ve seen my previous tips, I love keyboard shortcuts! Once you get the hang of them, they make using your PC so much quicker and easier, and can be a lifesaver if your mouse is misbehaving! This week, I’ve got some handy shortcuts for when you are in your Documents (or My Documents) folder. They’re quicker ways to delete, rename, and copy a file.
- CTRL while dragging an item with the mouse (Copy the selected item)
- CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item (Create a shortcut to the selected item)
- F2 key (Rename the selected item)
- SHIFT+DELETE (Delete the selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin. But be careful with this one! You don’t want to delete something important)
A really impressive website – e-cards
Every so often I get e-cards – electronic cards. The way it works is you get emailed a link, then you click on it and it takes you to a webpage where you see the card, complete with a message from the person who sent it. Some of them are pretty good! But I’ve had several lately created by one particular card company – and these are the best I’ve seen:
They’re a bit fancier than some and are really well created. You do have to pay to join (it’s £7 odd for a year) but if you send a lot of e-cards tha doesn’t work out as very much per card – there’s no limit on how many you can send.
Well, that’s it for now
Yours
Tim Wakeling
PS Feel free to forward this email on to a friend who might find it helpful. If you’ve had it from a friend, you can sign up so you don’t miss any here. It’s free, we’ll never pass on your email address and you can cancel any time you like.