Tom’s Tech Tip: Mouse-Away Your Fears as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant
I thought I’d start out 2015 by wishing all my CLNC® amigos and other readers a happy New Year. I also wanted to take a moment to remind everyone that there is NO REASON WHATSOEVER for any Certified Legal Nurse Consultant to download a malware package to your computer because you clicked on a link in an unexpected or suspicious email.
It’s very easy to hide a malicious or even a non-malicious link inside a hyperlink in an email message. In fact, the more popular a service or website is, the more likely it is to be spoofed. There was a dangerous Dropbox phishing attack late last year that was very dangerous because the “spoofed” page was actually hosted on Dropbox. But the good news is that most phishing attacks aren’t that sophisticated.
Smart Certified Legal Nurse Consultants know that if they receive an email from FedEx, Dropbox or a bank or credit card company (especially one they don’t bank with) that has a link in it – they should BEWARE. Recently I witnessed a panic over a poisoned or spoofed Dropbox link. It was cleverly done but not the dangerous attack above, so there was no reason to panic and there was no reason to click on the link to find out it was bad. All anyone had to do was hover their mouse over the suspicious link and their computer would have displayed the real destination HTML address (http://www.you-re-in-trouble-if-you-click-here.com.ru) that the poisoned link resolves to instead of the address that was showing (http://www.dropbox.com/important-LNC-Info). Take a moment to read this blog to see a deconstructed phishing email showing bad links. In fact, mouse-over that link to see how it works.
When dealing with email, a little common sense goes a long way. Spoofs are getting better and better. I’ve seen a few that have almost fooled me – until I started mousing-over the links. A good spoof will have some links to the real page it’s pretending to be – but the call to action link (Click Here to Download Your Files, Reset Your Password, Confirm Your Log-In, etc.) will resolve to the malware site. If you’re worried, just let your mouse show you the real link.
Keep on Techin’ (Safely),
Tom
P.S. Comment and share how you tell phishing emails from real emails.
One thought on “Tom’s Tech Tip: Mouse-Away Your Fears as a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant”
Good tips, Tom. I get emails to my business email account. Some were legitimate from other CLNC® consultants and some were suspicious in the Junk folder. Malware is very tricky as you described. I will remember to hover the mouse next time.
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Good tips, Tom. I get emails to my business email account. Some were legitimate from other CLNC® consultants and some were suspicious in the Junk folder. Malware is very tricky as you described. I will remember to hover the mouse next time.