Police: Fishing is fun, Internet Phishing Scams Aren't

If you know anything about the Internet, then you know that Phishing is a scam where some unscrupulous contributor to society designs an email to look like it comes from some legitimate business. It's usually a large business because that increases the chances that someone is a client of that business.

After they design this email, they then use a program that generates millions of random emails or they just buy a list of actual emails from another unscrupulous person. 

Two such scams showed up in my personal email last week.

The American Express one looked pretty good. If you receive a Phishing email, delete it. Do not click on any of the links. If you do, you open the door for a virus or spyware and even worse, you click the link and then fill in the information they ask for. 

The second email from "Wayne" made me laugh. I responded to "Wayne" and said, "Really Wayne, tell me more!"  I should have just deleted it, because by responding, my email is now "active" which means that the scammers know it is a live email. Just delete these kinds of emails and never click on the links or respond to them.

Officer Larry Jacobs is a Crime Prevention Specialist with the Sandy Springs Police Department. He can be reached at ljacobs@sandyspringsga.gov.