How to avoid e-commerce scams - Phishing emails

Recently there has been a lot of news regarding the phenomena known as "phishing emails."

Anyone who does business on the Internet today has undoubtedly, at one time or another, received an official looking email, which appears to come from a legitimate online community asking the reader to supply sensitive information.  The source of such emails are usually scammers, who are attempting to lure an unsuspecting reader into providing some type of sensitive information, so that the scammer can then use this information for criminal activity.

Below are a few useful guidelines to help tell the difference between a phishing email, and a legitimate email from an online community.

• Phishing emails almost always contain a generic greeting, and are not addressed directly to the receiver of the email.  Most phishing emails begin with a greeting such as, "Dear Alibaba User," and do not contain unique greetings such as, "Dear Mr. Watkinson."  In most cases, the scammer does not know who the phishing email is being sent to, so a generic greeting is used in the hopes that he reader will not notice the message is not addressed to them personally.

• Most phishing emails contain horrendous grammar and punctuation errors.  Even a very casual reader should be able to identify the numerous typos found with a typical phishing email.  On occasion, phishing emails are often written in all capital letters, with only periods used as punctuation. 

• The general tone of most phishing emails is usually very demanding, and very harsh.  Phishing emails usually threaten all sorts of dire consequences, which will happen immediately, if the reader does comply and submit the requested information instantly.

• Phishing emails often demand that the reader supply sensitive information such as login information, personal identification information, and or bank card information.  This is exactly the type of information that most online communities will never ask you to verify via email, if at all.

If you suspect that you have received a phishing email, the best thing to do is avoid clicking any links found within the email, and most certainly do not reply to the email, even with fake information.  It may be tempting to give the scammers a dose of their own medicine, by replying to their phishing email with useless junk information.  However, replying to the phishing email will let the scammers know that your email address is valid, and that email is being opened at your inbox, and thus trigger other problems down the road.