[الفارس]

How to tell it’s a scam?
·The “friendly name” that the email is from is “Microsoft Promotion Team”, but if you look at the actual email address it came from (Memmi82@netti.fi), it’s not a Microsoft address, or a promotion management company.
· The reply-to address is a gmail address. Microsoft would not use a competitor’s email service as their reply-to address. Additionally, it’s different than the sender address.
· It is not addressed to an individual. Occasionally, there are legitimate sweepstakes that you’re notified via email, but they will be addressed to you as an individual.
· The email begins, “The prestigious Microsoft and AOL…” A corporation wouldn’t tout themselves like that. And more likely in a legitimate sweepstakes email winning notification, it would start out with something like, “Congratulations, you have just won…”
· It asks for your personal information. No legitimate company, especially Microsoft, will ever ask you to provide you username, password, date of birth and/or country, credit card information, etc, via email.
· It has a foreign language at the bottom of it that is different from the language it was sent in.

Email Scam #4: The sudden emergency!
You receive email that appears to be from one of your friends that says they are stranded and need only a few thousand dollars to help them out. Any person would help a true friend if they can, right? Sure they would, but before you respond or act, ask yourself about the likelihood of your friend being in that situation.
· Have they mentioned that they will be traveling?
· Do they regularly participate in the kind of activity described?
· Sanity check the information and if at the end you still aren't sure, then pick up the phone and call them.
Today's technologies make it easy to impersonate someone and hard to find out whom is really behind the act. We must all realize that each piece of information we read and act upon has the time needed to pass our logic checks before we respond. One false click, and it result in you needing to spend time recovering your email, blog, or other service; or it could be months regaining your identity.

Email Scam #5: If you don’t forward this email, something bad will happen.
We’ve all seen emails that promise great things if you forward the email to all your contacts, or threaten bad things if you don’t. Topics Hotmail customers and friends have asked about most frequently are listed below, and link directly to the snopes.com articles debunking them:
· A fee will be charged for Hotmail.
· Get cash from Microsoft, or other companies or get free items (gift certificates, phones, etc) for forwarding an email.
· Internet petition to keep Messenger a free service.
· Medical appeals usually involving injured or sick children.

What should you do if you receive a questionable email?
1. Investigate the information.
Take some time and check up on the information. Often sites like snopes.com can provide information on known chain letters and other scams and untruths. Do not click on links within the mail, but do goto that company’s website, and contact their customer service reps via phone or online to verify the validity of the email.

2. Report suspicious activities.
If you think someone has accessed your Hotmail account, that the Windows Live ID sign-in page looks fraudulent, or you receive an email that tries to confirm a password change you didn’t authorize, change your password immediately by going to: http://account.live.com. Next, help ensure your PC has not been infected with a virus or malware by running a free full-PC scan.
3. Help the Hotmail team identify new scams. Click on the Junk button in Hotmail and select “Junk” or “Report phishing scam” to report it to the Hotmail team. Whatever you do, do not reply back to the sender