Recently we’ve had a few calls from Islanders asking why they are getting emails saying that their “cloud data” is about to be removed or deleted unless they renew their credit card details.
This might not always be a “scam”, but often can be. The first thing to check is if you actively use the service that the email is warning about. If you are unsure how to proceed then give us a call. It is free to ring us for a chat, we want to help, we only charge if we need to visit you or if you need to come in and have things checked by our experts, so don’t be shy, your safety is paramount!
Following these calls from fellow Islanders we felt that we should post something which might save people in our community money and peace of mind, so here are a few pointers for you to start with:
Check the email address of the sender
Scammers often use made up email addresses from which they send their emails. Any email from a legitimate company will have their proper email address:
In the above screen shot you can see that the email address ends in @pbtech.co.nz, this generally means that this email is sent from that authenticated and authorized email server to me and is therefore legitimate. The above example is from Outlook and can be found in the top of the message pane on the right hand side.
Here is an example of a false email address sent by a scammer:
If you look at the top you can see that the email address ends in @lausd.net; if this were truly from Microsoft Office365 Team it would have a Microsoft address:
This one, above, is from Microsoft and you can see the correct email address after @.
How are email addresses constructed?
Emails addresses are composed of two main parts separated by @.
The first part if the individual or team name, such as richard@ which denotes the individual sending the email.
In the scam example above we can see that the “user”, or individual, is named “cyh11241” which does seem a bit suspect.
The second part of the address, following the @, is what is called the “Domain”. The Domain is the authorized name of the organization from whence the email is sent. This domain is legally registered by one of several authorities and is unique to that company. We won’t go into the .co.nz or .com suffixes at this point, but will do so in a later blog, for the purposes of this post they aren’t relevant just yet.
In the scam example we can see that the Domain is @lauds.net and is NOT @microsoft.com.
Any legal company or government body will always have a legitimate domain after the @, like @islandtech.nz.
If any part of the email looks suspicious it is best to ring the company involved or send an email to them but to an address that you know is correct and safe.
NEVER click or open an email with a suspicious address or from an address or an entity from which you were not expecting any contact.
If you are still uncertain then please ring us and we will see if we can help over the phone, or pop in.
We will release some other hints and tips on avoiding scammers over the coming weeks, but if in doubt then ignore it or talk to us.
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