Phishing Scams and Genealogy On Line: Do NOT open this email!!

I certainly hope you are not one of those people who are flattered when they get an email from an African student or prince or whatever, telling you that you have been selected to receive a lot of money tax free. You may have gotten a similar notice and finally figured out that it was a scam, but the level of sophistication of the phishing scams has just climbed a notch or two and you might get sucked into compromising your passwords and have everyone in your email contact list get a phishing email with your name on it. Here is the rule folks:

DO NOT EVER OPEN AN EMAIL THAT HAS AN ATTACHMENT YOU CANNOT VERIFY WITH THE SENDER BEFORE OPENING. SIMPLY DELETE THE EMAIL WITHOUT OPENING IT OR THE ATTACHMENT.

Now, what if I am sending you some photos of your great-grandmother? Then I better call you on the phone or text you and tell you what I am doing. It does not matter who sends you this type of email, delete it. Recently, I have seen very clever forgeries purporting to be from PayPal, my bank and most recently my wife.

What do you do if you inadvertently open the email? Don't download or open the attachment. If you mistakenly open the attachment, I would suggest deleting it and emptying the trash. Next, I would change the password to your email account immediately. If this fails to work and stop your friends and relatives from getting bogus emails in your name, then cancel you email account (after saving off all your old email) and start over with a new email account. The most efficient way to do this is open a new account and start directing all your contacts to the new email. Then delete the old email once you have made the change over. Yes, this is painful. Yes, I have had to do it myself.