Messages You Will Never Get in Your Inbox and Other Weird Online Stuff

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 26 Feb 2009

Google has recently announced that it has enhanced the attach files feature on Gmail, and the news got me thinking that this is good news for outgoing messages, but what about incoming ones? What are the emails that could originate from legitimate, trustworthy sources, but never make it to your inbox? In my web browsing I also managed to stumble upon a few other things that should satisfy your craving for the weird.

Regardless of what email client you use, there are certain types of emails that are always spam, or phishing attacks, or originate from malicious sources. They could have trustworthy origins, but the simple truth of the matter is that a legitimate source would almost never send you such an email.

Let’s sink our teeth into this so to speak, and see what legitimate emails will never make it to your inbox:
- Prescriptions: your doctor will never send you a prescription via email, nor will he advertise some obscure pill this way. This is obviously a spam message advertising “genuric Vi@gra”.

- Security software renewal: the developer behind the security software you currently have installed on your machine will not inform you by email that you need to renew your license. Such a feature is already present in the software itself. Take Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 for example: it precisely tells you how many more days you have left in your subscription. It even tells you when you need to update the software (assuming you have the update feature turned to manual). This message is some sort of scareware or scam trying to get you to install a bogus security solution.

- Bank statement: this is such an obvious phishing attack that I will not even get into it. As a rule of thumb, do not click the link provided in the message as it will not take you to your bank’s web page, it will lead you to a phishing site.

- Various winnings: if you did not play the lottery for example, how can you expect to win? That message informing you that you have won a ton of money is obviously a scam. You will have to provide your email address in order to confirm your winnings – do this and your inbox will pretty soon be flooded with spam.

Moving on, here are some web pages that can only be categorized as weird (okay, then at least intriguing):
- Create your own, personalized headstone on Tombstone.
- Create a fake high school and college diploma with My Internet Diploma.
- Print out fake airline tickets with Ticket-O-Matic.
- Design your own church sign with Church Sign Generator.
- Get on the cover of the most popular magazines with Fake Magazine Cover.


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