How to Make Sure Your Emails Are Safe

Most people that use email are unaware of the tricks hackers will go through to steal your personal information. I am going to go through a list of they types of emails I get almost daily and let you know which one is the most dangerous to you.

Let's go into the mind of a hacker for a minute. They will play on your fears, and your greed. Listed below are the two most common types of email that can scam you out of your personal information and money.

The "I need your help" Email.


•A lawyer looking for Heir to large Estate

•Exiled Royalty from Another country

•Wife of someone important that is in desperate need of help.

•Winning the Lottery


The email from the Lawyer will tell you that he has searched for an heir to his clients fortune and you came up in his search. He will then ask for your personal information to confirm that you are the correct heir.After getting your information he will tell you of the fee's involved in getting the money out of probate. Most often the estate is worth a few millions dollars, so the lawyer will keep asking for more money and fees until you stop sending the money to him.There will always be a reason or excuse for requesting more money. There has been cases of older retired people losing their whole savings on this scam.



The exiled Royalty is asking you to accept transfer of money to you because he is unable to get his millions of dollars out of the country. He will send you amounts in increments of 5-10k dollars and will offer you 10-20% of that for each transaction. This scam involves counterfeit checks, money orders, or cashiers checks. You deposit the amount in the bank and send him the amount back minus your fee and it looks like you just made a lot of money, except the counterfeit check or money order is detected after you transfer the money into his designated account which he withdraws and closes before you know what happens. You were just scammed out of your money, this scammer uses the readers greed scam their victims out of their money. I do not think insurance will cover this kind of loss.

The Wife of the Rich Mogul will ask for help in transferring money to your country. Her husband will killed in a coup or assassination and she needs your help. The email is similar to the exiled Royalty. they appeal to your compassion and then your greed. You get counterfeit checks and they take your money and run.

You Won the Internet Lottery, your name chose from millions of email accounts to receive Millions of dollars. They ask for information and then start requesting fees from you before they can release the money. You will pay for background check to make sure that you are the correct winner, legal fees, bank fees, transfer fees...etc... they will keep asking for money until you stop sending it.

These emails are the obvious scams, the spelling and punctuation in the email body is terrible and most of the time appear in your spam email so not a lot of people fall for these anymore. But there are enough people out there who will send information and then money to make it worth the scammers time to keep sending.

Phishing Emails

These types of emails are the most dangerous, they look so real and authentic that it is hard to tell from the real thing. You will get an email from your bank saying that your account was temporarily suspended and complete information below to re-activate your account. This includes name, age, sex, address, social security, user name and password for that website. Another type of email along the same lines will have a URL Link that sends you to an exact copy of your log in site to your bank. You log into your bank as you were from their website and you just gave the scammer your username and password. In a matter of hours, they can completely drain your account of all its money. Examples of Phishing sites I have seen in my email include banks, Paypal, gaming sites, Facebook, My space, Ebay, amazon which includes any online stores that you have ever purchased from.

How to Avoid Getting Scammed

1st: Never click on a link you get in a email. Phishing emails use the link to get you fo to their URL to put your information into their database. If you get an email that looks real and requests information from you.,DO NOT click on the link! Ttype the URL you wish to go into your address bar! Use your favorites or password manager to go to the site in question.

2nd: If it looks too good to be true it probably is. Scammers will use your greed to get money out of you. Any emails offering you millions of dollars is a scam. Why do they need money from you if they have millions of dollars?

3rd: Not sure if the email is real? You can call their customer service or ask support online, again make sure you do not use any links in email to get to the real web page. Check out the web page security center for more information on each site.


Rod Primanti is the Owner of Primanti PC Solutions a computer service company In North Orange County, CA. The area of service also includes East Los Angeles County

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