I just received one such email earlier this week. Very cleverly written, it was trying to warn me that suspicious activity was taking place on my PayPal account. At first, I thought, “Oh no!” because I’ve actually been doing some things with my account recently. But then I read on and applied my checklist to spot a scam.

Here’s what the email said:

Dear PayPal Member,

We recently noticed one or more attempts to log into your PayPal account from a foreign IP address.

If you recently accessed your account while traveling, the unusual log in attempts may have been initiated by you. However if you are the rightful holder of the account, click on the link below to log into the account and follow the instructions.

[link removed]

If you choose not to complete the request, you give us no choice but to suspend your account temporary.

It takes at least 72 hours for the investigation in this case and we strongly recommend you to verify your account at that time.

Thank you for using PayPal!
PayPal Account Review Department

—————————————————————-

PayPal Email ID PP232

Like I said, pretty sneaky, yet sounds very plausible. But here’s how I determined it was bogus and this is something you can do as well:

• There was no email in the “To:” field. Okay, PayPal knows my email address so they’d have no reason not to use it.
• My name wasn’t used in the greeting.
• They encouraged me to login using the link (I removed it here for safety reasons). But if you’re new to this sort of thing, the next time you get something like this in your email, try rolling your mouse over the link and look at the URL that shows up in the lower left corner of your browser. In my case, they were completely different. This means that just because a link can be displayed to you on screen, doesn’t mean that’s the code behind it. Instant gotcha!

What could have happened had I clicked on the link? I probably would have seen a site looking very much like PayPal. And it might have encouraged me to login to what I thought was PayPal. That would have been bad because the criminals would have then have my login.

Or just as bad, I could have been infected just by visiting the web page. Yes, that’s possible.

So please be careful when you receive this sorts of messages. If in doubt, then contact the company it purports to be directly and ask them to confirm the message.

I want to take a moment to encourage you to branch out and get to know other blogs that might match your interests. There’s something called FeedaPalooza that’s designed to do just that.

The man behind the concept of FeedaPalooza is Aaron Abber, an online marketing whiz who I’ve been getting to know. He came up with this promotion based on RSS Appreciation Day that took place May 1 (yeah, I didn’t know about that day either), but this promotion runs until May 15. It’s meant to encourage people to get to know other blogs and have them subscribe to their RSS feeds, like mine right here.

So in addition to broadening your collection of online topics, you’ll also get a wide offering of freebies like Domain Secrets Revealed, Adsense Income Blueprint, and Beat Cancer Now, and many more.

It’s good to get out a little and with Summer coming up, visiting a good blog is just like reading a good book to spend your time. If you’re a new visitor to Family WebWatch, I welcome you as a regular subscriber, too.

1. Take the computer out of the kid’s room. What I find particularly frightening is that parents tend to do things that make them popular with their kids, not necessarily what’s safe for them. It’s almost like they’re trying to be their friend more than their parent. For example, they buy their kid a laptop or desktop and take no steps to set ground rules or follow up on agreements to not visit inappropriate websites.

Computers are a necessity in the world we live in, so not giving them a computer I think is too extreme in most cases. However, you can have them use it in an open area of your home. “But mom, I feel like you’re not giving me any privacy!” is what they’ll say, to which you reply, “When it comes to how you use the computer, you’re right. Take it or leave it and by the way, I love you.”

Harsh? Well, that depends on how soft a parent has been, so there may be a bumpy transition. But ultimately, a parent who cares about their children will no doubt want to know where they go outside of the home. Going online is no different.

2. Install a web filter. Tons of choices exists. Some good, some not so good, so you should spend a little time reviewing what others have said and decide which one is best for you. (I’ll be posting more about some choices you might consider later.)

3. Explain to your child what’s acceptable and what’s not. It’s not enough to tell them “Don’t go anywhere online that’s not good.” That leaves the door wide open for interpretation. What’s good? Social networks like MySpace for example, can be a good thing, but if used inappropriately, then trouble can happen. Sites of girls posing in bikinis may seem harmless, but could ultimately lead to other sites that are more provocative and then can lead to porn. Gambling sites are another danger zone.

4. Set timing restrictions. It’s one thing if a kid is online doing homework for hours. It’s an entirely different thing if they’re just online for hours aimlessly browsing. Personally, I’m guilty of this one as I do go online a lot keeping up my various blogs. Even so, I should still make time to be offline with the living and get some exercise. So even if a kid is online doing nothing harmless, it’s still a good thing, both mentally and physically, to have some time not hooked up to the web.

These are some of the main points that parents tend to overlook when it comes to their children being online. By no means is it conclusive, but starting with these can provide the foundation for safer and more beneficial web experience. Kids are naturally curious and that’s good, but if left to their own devices — without parental supervision — then that curiosity can lead them in the wrong direction.

This is especially true when it comes to Internet safety.

Do you really take part in your child’s Internet activities? Do you know where they’ve been online and to whom they’re talking to? Seriously, when a computer is hooked up to the Web, it’s a window into a whole world of things AND it’s a window into your home.

Sometimes parents forget this one crucial piece of information. They’ve given their child their own computer in their room and they think they’ve done a good thing by making them happy. Okay, happy they may be, but are they safe? Are they getting to know other people that, if you met them in person, you’d run screaming the other way?

Sexual predators know this. They know parents tend to let kids have unsupervised Internet activity and use this to the fullest extent of their skills. They groom kids into trusting them, get to know more about them, send them gifts to dig their claws into their prey even deeper. Don’t let your child be another statistic.

I watched a video this morning where a woman explained that her husband of 10 years was a sexual predator. He wasn’t someone in a dark trench coat either — what some people still think sexual predators look like. No, this guy was a children’s dentist and got a long swimmingly with his patients.

She didn’t have a clue until she was told by authorities that he went out of the country on what she thought was a business trip, but was actually going to meet up with young boys to have sex. I’m not going to sugar-coat this. Parents have to realize this stuff goes on all the time and the Web has only made it worse.

The Web is just like fire — it can help you or burn you or a loved one. Don’t let that happen. Get to know where your kids are going online. You’d want to know where they’re going out on the street with their friends, right? This is no different.

I’ll be posting later this week steps you can take to help make for a safe Web environment. Please stay tuned.

The article I read told the story of eight teenagers (EIGHT!) who lured another student into a home…and simply beat her…for 30 minutes.

Besides YouTube being involved, MySpace was somehow at the beginning of the story. Apparently, one of the attackers hacked into the victim’s MySpace account, not once, but twice. I didn’t see any details about that activity, but when you hear something like that, it’s usually because the hacker wants to defame the account and/or pretend to be the person (the victim in this case) and start something.

During the attack, the girl was pleading with them to stop. She tried to leave, but was kept from the door. Two boys were outside keeping watch, while the six girls remained inside taking turns using the girl as a punching bag. At one point, you could hear one girl in the background, “Not the shelf, not the shelf!” That must have been the girl who lived there and didn’t want her stuff messed with. Beating the girl was okay, but the fragile glass shelf had to be protected.

I am sickened by this and I hope in some way that this finally causes people to wake up and realize just how bad things are with some children today. They’re desensitized to violence, have weak and distorted values, if any. They’re willing to throw their lives away in exchange for a few minutes of one infamous event.

I won’t link to the video, but I have provided the video of the parents who have spoken out against this tragic event. At the end of the video, the father said that at one point his daughter was pleading to be beaten by just one of them. The response by the attackers was, “No, we’re all going to beat you.”

Pure evil.

Basically, these kits can be purchased and ready in a matter of minutes. All one needs to do is to modify one file so that it knows where to send it’s findings to, and then install the files onto a compromised hosting server. That’s pretty much it.

The phisher will now have a site that’s pre-made and looks pretty official. All they have to do is market the site (again, very easy to do) and wait for someone to fall into their trap.

I’m always disappointed to read things like this because it tells me there are some great minds out there that have simply turned down the wrong path. To think of all the good they could be contributing, they’d rather use their skills for ill-gotten gain.

Tips to avoid becoming a phishing victim:
As with anything you receive in your email inbox from someone purporting to be some company, please be aware of how it looks and what it’s asking you for. Any reputable company is not going to ask you for personal information, so don’t be so fast to provide what they’re asking for. Instead, do a little research, including contacting the company claiming to be the sender of the email, but use contact information you have obtained, not the information that may be included in the email itself.

Also, if you do find that the email is a scam, be sure to report it as well as reporting it to your email provider if they provide that ability. Gmail not only has a way to report spammers, but also phishers.

Anything that helps get in the way of these scammers, can help someone.

I’ve been running several projects since late last year, and then, of course, there were the holidays to contend with. So I thought I’d kick the dust off by giving Family WebWatch a makeover and bring with it renewed energy to post more regularly.

I welcome your suggestions on what topics you’d like to see covered here. In the meantime, I’ll be working behind the scenes to bring more content to the front.

Stay tuned!