It’s that time of year again; tax time. Here you are preparing your tax return and you’re already getting emails about the submission before you’ve finished? BEWARE of spammers trying to take advantage of you during this time. We have already seen several different versions of emails that spammers have sent.
The goal of these campaigns is to have you click on their spam campaign. The links in the email will direct you to a fraudulent web site. Keep in mind that these are designed to look very official and are actually composed nicely with correct grammar (most of the time) and appear to be very professional. Clicking on these emails can lead to your computer becoming infected with a virus, trojan or malware. What’s worse, these campaigns are using phishing which is designed to gather your personal information including your social security number, login information or even your credit card data.
How do you avoid these spam campaigns?
Spammers unfortunately often have the upper hand because they create the spam campaign and then Email Providers like MxToolBox have to quickly adjust their filters. While the filters are being automatically adjusted to combat these types of spam attacks you may still encounter messages like this. In addition to being aware of these potentially dangerous spam tactics we would also recommend having the correct protection! Most of us have a good Anti-virus program but that is like locking the front door but leaving a window open. If you click on an email that has a fraudulent link, you have opened the your personal window to a web-based attack. Unfortunately most networks don’t have Internet Browser Web Security so you could be very vulnerable to this type of email to web-based attack.
MxToolbox has partnered with Webroot to offer Web Security to protect your network from attacks through the web browser. Our Total Security Solution includes Business Email Perimeter Security in combination with Web Security to provide additional layers of protection to combat Email and Internet threats. Webroot eliminates spyware and viruses with best-of-breed scanning engines and offers a 100% guarantee. In addition to protecting against malware you have the ability to enforce web access policies and generate detailed reports on your users’ browsing history.
Below are a few samples of the most recent spam campaigns we have noticed. You may notice that the third one below is not necessarily tax related, but is an inquiry from the Better Business Burea. This is not a real request and is spam. Be wary!
If you’ve ever had problems with Spam like this in your network, or worse yet, if you’ve experienced the pains and toils of the virus/malware infections that results; rest easy – there is a solution. Even if you have Anti-Virus software installed, it’s not enough; you can still be susceptible to these problems.
Please visit our Website to learn more about our Web Security Solution and call (866)-MXTOOLBOX / (866)-698-6652 to speak to one of our specialists about how you can put this problem to rest forever!