Making a Living Online

There seems to be a new wave of the same ol spam but with a new twist to it. If you are an avid forum-goer then chances are you might have received one of these PMs before. Here’s how it works:

you receive a new personal message(PM) at a forum you are registered at. You may have found out about this new message either by logging on to the forum and being alerted of a new PM or by email since most forums send out an email when a user receives a new PM.

The message will be sent by a user that may be perceived as authoritative, such as yourfriendlyadmin or forumowner. The message will try to trick you into believing that you have a virus on your computer and that there will be serious consequences if you do not resolve the issue. Here is a message i received personally:

Dear, Josiah!

A virus alert was noticed on your computer.
We highly recommend you to check your computer and perform online virus check at our site immediately: ************/online-scanner/
If you do not pass this test  we will have to delete your account and forward a complaint to your ISP with attached log file (your IP address, etc.).
——————————————————————————
Forum Administration www.*********.com

Obviously the end-goal is to deceive people into clicking the link at which point they will be attacked by taking advantage of any glitch, flaw or loophole in your PC there might be. An easy way to prevent this from happening to you is to know the warning signs.

• User is newly registered(not always the case though)
• User has zero or little posts
• User does not have avatar(account not personalized)
• The username tries to  imitate a moderator or admin status.
• Fake signature added in the message by using dashes
• And of course, any outbound links of any kind.

Watch out for any of these red flags and you’ll be just fine, Just remember to report suspicious PMs or posts to your admin or moderator.