"We need your bank account information, social security number, user IDs and passwords so we can remove funds from your account and make huge purchases without your knowledge or consent. Reply with the information or go to http://gregsbank.com and enter all your personal financial data. "
If thieves sent messages like the one above, it would be easy to identify their schemes and avoid being victimized. But they do not. So we have to be diligent and on-guard, because anyone with an e-mail address is at risk of being scammed, or phished by on-line thieves.
How the term “Phishing” developed is unclear, but the idea of baiting, luring and hooking victims certainly applies. Essentially the term describes an array of methods where computer users are tricked, scammed, cheated and robbed over the internet. Phishing attacks are growing more sophisticated and difficult to detect, even for the most technically savvy, and people are being fooled into divulging personal financial information every day. Once tricked, victims experience credit card fraud, bank fraud, and identity theft.
Phishers use fabricated e-mail messages and fraudulent web sites that look quite legitimate to fool recipients into entering personal data such as credit card numbers, account information, usernames and passwords, social security numbers, etc. By carefully crafting fraudulent web sites that look like those of well-known banks, retailers and credit card companies, phishers are able to get recipients to respond.
Some recent phishing attacks include:
2-18- Huntington Bank- ‘Urgent Security Notification'
2-17- Paypal- 'Unauthorized Access...'
2-08- KeyBank- 'SECURE YOUR ACCOUNT NOW'
2-02- eBay- 'Account Verification'
Don’t be the next victim! Follow these guidelines to keep yourself– and your information– safe:
Be suspicious of any email urgently requesting personal financial information. Scam artists often use upsetting or exciting (false) statements to get people to react immediately
Don't use links in an email to get to a web page. Call the company, or go to the website directly by typing the web address in your browser
Avoid filling out forms in email messages that ask for personal financial information.
Make sure your financial information is being sent securely. When submitting credit card or sensitive information over the internet, check the Web address in your browser’s address bar. It should be "https://" rather than just "http://", to indicate it’s a secure site.
Keep your browser up to date with security patches applied. If you’re using Internet Explorer, go to the Microsoft Security page at http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms05-014.mspx to download a special patch relating to certain phishing schemes
Regularly check bank and credit card statements to verify the legitimacy of transactions.
To learn more about internet fraud, and ways to avoid being a victim, you can visit these sites:
Federal Trade Commission:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/alerts/phishingalrt.htm
FBI- Internet Fraud Complaint Center:
http://www.ifccfbi.gov/index.asp
Wells Fargo Bank Fraud Prevention:
http://www.wellsfargo.com/jump/fraud_prevention.jhtml
CitiBank– Learn about Spoofs.:
http://www.citi.com/domain/spoof/learn.htm
Sessions are offered via Centra Symposium. To enroll or browse events, visit
http://centra.tamu.edu/main/tce.
If you miss an event or want to see it again, go to
http://eit.tamu.edu/recordings.html
or click the Public Recordings link in Centra to view recorded events.
We now have online training from Element K available. Technical and soft skills topics include MS Office, WP Office, Adobe, Leadership, Communication Skills, Financial Accounting and more. You can view demo courses online at http://www.elementk.com/e-learning/htm/demo.asp. To request an account or get more information about using this resource contact Jennifer Jahedkar at 979.845.2290 or Susanna Coppernoll at 979.845.2250.
The Brazos Valley Macromedia Users Group-Summer Wilson The Brazos Valley Macromedia User’s Group will meet on March 15th at MicroAge. For topic and more information visit http://bvmmug.tamu.edu
The Brazos Valley Web Guild-Summer Wilson The Brazos Valley Web Guild will meet Friday April 1st. For more information visit: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bvweb/
FCS: Fit Family Fit Kids http://fitfamilyfitkids.com/
4H: My Summer Camps http://www.mysummercamps.com/
AG and Natural Resource: Texas Garden Clubs http://www.texasgardenclubs.org/
TEXT ANCHORS
• Make text anchors (links) descriptive, so when read out of context they still make sense. • Place a dividing character between consecutive links. Vertical bars are often used to prevent a list of links from being read as one link.
STYLE SUGGESTIONS:
• Make ALT-TEXT descriptions short and descriptive.
• For bullets use a lower case "o" as the ALT-TEXT.
• For horizontal rules use the words "horizontal line" as the ALT-TEXT.
GIFs and other IN LINE GRAPHICS
• Provide a text description (ALT-TEXT) for decorative graphics such as borders and logos.
Sue Gordon, District 6 Office Manager, suggested we write about scroll wheel mouse tricks. Thanks, Sue! Her favorite is the ability to enlarge text with your mouse. In Internet Explorer, and many other programs, you can enlarge or shrink the text (magnification) by holding down the Ctrl key and scrolling the mouse wheel up to zoom in and down to zoom out.
The scroll wheel can also be used to scroll backwards and forwards in Internet Explorer. Just hold down the Shift key and move the wheel on your wheel mouse– forward will go forward and backwards will go back.
If your wheel movements make your screen jump too far, or not enough, with each click, you can easily adjust the wheel's sensitivity. In the Address bar of Windows Explorer window, type Control Panel/Mouse, and press Enter.
Depending on the type of mouse you have, there may be other options, but look for a way to adjust how many lines (or how fast) your pages scroll with each wheel click.
Watermarks in word processors are created by taking a picture, reducing the brightness so the text can be read with the watermark in place, and putting it behind the text, as figure 3 illustrates. The watermark will appear on each page in the document until it is discontinued. WordPerfect will even do the adjustment and placement for you, making it easy to create watermarks.
In WordPerfect, Watermark is found under Insert in the menu bar. You’ll see a dialog box that allows the option to choose two different watermarks, A and B, as shown in figure 4, in order to put a different watermark on even and odd pages. This dialog box allows you to create, edit or discontinue the use of one or both watermarks. Clicking on Create will take you to a screen that looks like a blank WordPerfect document screen in full page view with a row of icons above it.
An article in the January 2005 issue of TnT explained ways to put Spanish characters into various software programs. It included nine characters that could be added to most programs using a combination of the ALT key and the num- bers in the numeric keypad. These nine characters are part of the Extended ASCII Character Set which includes 128 symbols, accessed with the ALT key and numbers between 128 and 255. (Numbers below 128 give letters and char- acters that are generally found on your keyboard.)
The nine characters in the previous article are part of the range from ALT 128 to ALT 168 which includes mostly foreign language characters and some monetary designations.
Other characters included in the set are: ALT 167 º the degree character; ALT 171 ½ rather than 1/ 2; ALT 172 ¼ rather than 1/ 4; ALT 179 - ALT 218 Line Draw characters; ALT 224 - ALT 238 Greek Letters; ALT 239 - ALT 253 Math Symbols.
To make sure the characters work correctly, insert them into the program you are using and test them with your printer. If you are using WordPerfect, it is better to select a character from the WordPerfect symbol set (go to Insert, Sym- bol or CTRL W) to get characters that look correct. If you don’t insert this way, WordPerfect will attempt to trans- late characters to symbols in its own symbol set, and some will translate correctly but others won’t.
Some of these characters will look right and print correctly in GroupWise as well. If you know the history behind GroupWise program, you may not be surprised to discover that the characters that WordPerfect translates cor- rectly into its symbol set are the same characters that work correctly in GroupWise. Some other symbols inserted from the WordPerfect symbol sets can be successfully copied to GroupWise as well.
When trying to view a PDF from the browser, some people have reported an error message that reads: Acrobat Reader - Error Reading linearized hint data..
There’s an easy fix, though! Open Adobe Acrobat and go to edit, preferences and inter- net (in version 6.0) or options (in version 5.0). Uncheck "Allow fast web view", as shown in figure 5. Click ok and then close Acrobat.
Then go back to your web browser and open the document. The PDF file should now display properly.