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Internet has become an essential tool
for communicating which is partly why it
is also become a popular target among
scammers and cyber criminals in order to
safeguard yourself from email scams
harmful software or identity theft it's
essential that you understand the ways
you might be at risk in this video we'll
go over the basics of identifying and
avoiding potentially harmful content on
the Internet
the first line of defense begins with
your email inbox you've probably heard
the term spam before in reference to
junk email spammers can send an email to
thousands of people at the same time and
they can do so anonymously making
anti-spam law is hard to enforce so it's
important to be cautious when it comes
to opening emails fortunately though
many email services now provide
customizable features to help you
protect your inbox for example the
ability to turn off email images spam
contains images that senders can track
when you open the email the images load
and the spammer will be able to tell if
your email works possibly resulting in
more spam
if you're using Gmail like I am you can
turn off email images by clicking the
gear icon
and then selecting settings from the
drop-down menu
choose ask before displaying external
images
then click Save
now if I get an email with images Gmail
will ask if I want the images to be
displayed
most email services also check to see if
incoming messages are spam if it finds
spam it will store the mail in a spam
folder so you don't accidentally open it
when you're checking your email spam
blocking systems aren't perfect though
and there may be times when legitimate
emails end up in your spam folder so
it's a good idea to regularly check and
make sure you aren't missing important
emails
to check your spam folder in Gmail click
more in the left pane then select spam
and here you can see all the emails that
have ended up in your spam folder
many email services have a feature you
can use to mark emails as spam in Gmail
I can just select the email and then
click this button to mark it as spam
this helps your email provider to filter
out these types of messages in the
future some spam emails are simply
annoying advertisements
others will claim to be contacting you
about something important when what
they're really trying to do is steal
your personal information this is known
as phishing it's a type of scam in which
an email pretends to be from a bank or
another trusted source in order to trick
you into handing over your personal
information by asking you to complete
some sort of action they may want you to
re enter a password verify or update
sensitive information like phone numbers
addresses or credit card numbers and
they almost always tell you to do so by
following links they provide it's a good
idea to avoid clicking links and emails
instead of clicking the link retype the
URL into your browser's address bar to
ensure that you go to the correct
website for example here's an email that
looks like it's from Bank of America
saying that some personal information
has been changed and asking me to verify
the changes by following a few links it
looks real enough at first glance but
it's surprisingly easy for scammers to
create deceiving details such as these
remember phishing emails won't always
look like they're fishing the whole
purpose is to look like they're from
your bank credit card or another trusted
company think of it this way if someone
came to your house saying they worked
for your bank and they needed your
social security number to verify that
you're the account holder would you give
it to them chances are you wouldn't give
out that information look at emails the
same way just because an email says it's
from a familiar company doesn't mean it
really is spam scams and phishing
schemes will keep evolving just as the
technology to stop them does but if you
know what to look for and what to avoid
you can keep your inbox that much safer
you