How to recognize online scams
I’m having email problems. Several times a day I get “mail delivery failure” notices for emails that I never sent. I’ve also been getting emails in foreign languages that I can’t read. Some of these emails don’t contain any message, or the attachments don’t make any sense.
Is someone using my email address to send messages to other people? What should I do?
Steven Russell, Galloway, Ohio
It’s possible that someone has gained access to your email account and is sending messages in your name. But it’s more likely that these are bogus emails from disreputable sources. Even the “mail delivery failure” emails are probably fake.
There are three things you should do immediately: Change your email password to lock out anyone who might be using the account. Stop opening suspicious emails and attachments. Run the free version of the Malwarebytes program in case the emails have installed any malicious software on your computer.
If anyone is using your email account, the goal would be to send junk or malicious emails to others using your name. The best defense against that is to create a strong new email password that would be hard for anyone else to guess.
It’s common for unscrupulous people to send fake emails that are designed to attract attention. The senders hope that curiosity will prompt you to open an email or an attachment, or to respond because you think it was sent to you by mistake.
Either response notifies the sender that your email address is valid, and thus a good place to send more malicious emails. In addition, opening these messages makes your computer vulnerable to infection by any malware that the email may carry.
If an email seems fake, don’t open it. Either delete it or send it to your email provider’s “spam” or “junk” folder (that may help the provider block similar messages in the future.)
I received pop-up messages telling me that there was a problem installing security updates for Windows 10. I used the online Microsoft Answer desk, which remotely took control of my PC to solve a problem (error 0xc1900200) with a memory partition (memory block division) on my solid state (computer-chipbased) drive. They also offered to sell me a $149 one-year service contract, but I didn’t buy it. Now my repair shop tells me the whole thing was a scam. Was it? Mike Judd, Tucson, Ariz.
No. While there are many scams that purport to be online support services, the Microsoft Answer Desk is legitimate, as is the Microsoft Assure support service they offered to you.
But it’s worth reading Microsoft’s warning about support scams that misuse its name. These include unsolicited bogus calls from fake support services, requests for credit card information to “validate” your copy of Windows and emails with fake “security update” attachments.