Two email scams to beware of: "Ticket Confirmation"

In the past week I've gotten TWO clever new scams by email, so here's a warning in case you haven't gotten yours yet.

1. "Southwest Airlines e=Ticket Confirmation"

That's the subject line.

The email, a beautiful picture stolen from a Southwest Airlines site, which my email security system won't let me paste into this email, said:

Dear (my email address),

Thank you for flying Southwest Airlines! Your e-tickets are confirmed.

Please confirm you tickets below (participation required). Please refer to the Travel Checklist for helpful before-you-go reminders.

Confirm Your e-Tickets Here
______________________________________________________________________

The "confirm" was in a colorful button you were supposed to click.

The actual site you would go to is NOT southwest airlines, but to a site that would inject a virus into your browser and do various things, ranging from screw up your browser to copy a virus to your computer.

And of course the "to unsubscribe, click here!" link would do the same thing.

I fly Southwest, so I was startled and almost clicked. But my good sense kicked in and I examined the URLs to discover the fraud.

This is a common tactic of fraudsters: Send you an email so provocative or odd that you click on something to find out more -- and you're immediately screwed.

TO PROTECT YOURSELF, DO THIS:

1. Have, or get, virus protection software -- I recommend ZoneAlarm.com

2. In your virus protection program, look for the "email protection" area dn turn it on.

3. In your BROWSER (IE, Internet Explorer, Foxfire, Safari, whatever) there is something called a PHISHINIG FILTER. In IE it's in the Tools dropdown. TURN IT ON! What this does is check every time your browser opens a window to see if that site happens to be listed on a current list of scam sites. In which case it will block the site so you don't accidentally open it and down load viruses before you can blink.

4. When you get an unexpected email with something amazing like this, STOP AND THINK before reflexively clicking on links to find explanations. One thing you can do is HOVER your MOUSE POINTER over the link and pause. Down at the bottom of the browser window the address that link is pointing to will be displayed. Look at it. If the email is supposed to be from southwest airlines, the link will probably be to a site that has "http://www.southwest.com?..." in it. If instead it has some gobbledegook address like the one above, "http://droilunstained.com/t/ln3r_vcmbn/25676", then it's probably a fraud. Especially if there's a bunch of nonsense characters in it.

. WHEN IN DOUBT, DELETE. The worst that can happen is that your friend has to re-send the email, or hte Irish Lottery will keep teh money you won even though you don't remember entering the Irish lottery....