We almost made it through April without discovering a new email scam but I did get one today. It’s a fake email from American Airlines confirming my ticket purchase. They provide a link to download the ticket of course. The link goes to a web site that has nothing to do with American Airlines and runs a script that undoubtedly infects your computer with something. The destination for this “ticket” was Boston. Anything to get someone to click a link I guess. The departure point was of course missing.

It’s tax season so of course we will now be getting tax related email scams. I received an email from eTrader about my tax documents being available on line. This is a very legitimate looking email.

All the links in the email go to etrade.com like they should. The English in the email is perfect. It even includes legitimate links to anti-phishing and anti-scam sections on etrades’ web site. The only clues that this is a scam email is the return address which goes to “investordelivery.com” and the attachment.

The attachment is a zip file. Inside the zip file is an executable file instead of a document. Obviously the payload.

These are things most people would miss so anyone receiving this email that was an eTrade customer would most likely be fooled in to opening it and becoming infected.

This is a clever email scam, especially for this time of year. I received an email supposedly from UPS. It says my address is wrong and provides a link to “Track your shipment now!”.

The email looks pretty legit and even uses my real name. The link does not go to UPS.com though. The links at the bottom of the email do seem to go to UPS which would add false legitimacy to the email.

In cases like this where you might actually have a shipment coming you should go directly to the UPS.com website and track your package that way.

Don’t click on links in emails no matter who they are from or how real they seem.