HOW TO DETERMINE FAKE MAIL OR FISHING MAIL

Find the link they are trying to get you to click, without clicking on the link highlight over it, and look in the lower left hand corner of the email window. It should show a URL. If the URL does not begin with:

http://www.[domain].com

...where [domain] is the domain of company in which the email is about. So in this example, paypal is the domain - so the URL must begin with http://www.paypal.com. If it has anything else after the http://. IT IS A SCAM! Do not even click it.

Some email programs will not show the URL in the lower left of the window, so you can either take a chance and click the link, hoping that it's not linking to a virus script or play it safe and install antivirus software. Most popular antivirus programs have anti-phishing capabilities built in to detect these sites for you and warn you in advance. If you want to see who we recommend for antivirus software,

Be careful when you receive any email that talks about your account or recent security issues. Also, these scams usually imitate large, popular sites such as Paypal, Ebay, some large banks, etc... If you ever fall for one of these scams, and someone gets ahold of your account information, you could have some major headaches down the road.