51–60 of 62 posts
I bought my mom an iPad (the largest one at the time) and bought her a printer that works with her iPad. In the two years since that, the only call that I've ever received was "Does this pop up that says 'OK/Cancel' that says my iPad is infected with a virus actually mean anything?" "No, Mom." "Ahh, ok. I didn't think so." Works like a charm.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone knows that such spam mails are NOT sent by the company, but by scammers. Look at the raw email header. So why is this comment on top? It seems HN got mainstream and with it the usefulness is declining - low quality comments staying on top that can be answered by common sense.
It's likely that Animats knows what he's doing. He also says that the email contains a link to the real website, not to a scam website. So, if it was sent by a scammer what's the purpose? How does it work? And if it was sent by the company, why are they sending email that looks like a scam?
Received: from pvma00057.prod.fedex.com ([204.135.8.98]:61625 helo=mx28.infosec.fedex.com)
by gator4118.hostgator.com with esmtps (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:256)
(Exim 4.87)
(envelope-from )
id 1dWn4C-00092V-Dd
for nagle@animats.com; Sun, 16 Jul 2017 12:10:48 -0500
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=fedex.com; s=edc; c=relaxed/relaxed;
q=dns/txt; i=@fedex.com; t=1500225037;
h=From:Sender:Reply-To:Subject:Date:Message-ID:To;
bh=M2wd7ncO9bsu5aQpoaGPtLYIjzi/OkxO+5qgmnqO1D4=;
b=ktUTxDShfkakjcLd2BEwRVC4X4ItHdPYvR+Dqyj6oiWPWrsuWA98jHqIssipCXHa
XsPn72sxMnWIlwy0LLC3r2WGTUBHg7afy0K804QLQ2ztSHr7CnMZ4jFh0O6A9ElQ
16twStNpiG9XBF4Gho08WHg+EUrKSnTqPwknnhOg+9BVyKZLsQhsGAk1Bl/Vgu9z
55RxPd3VjDlAM04i+sZZaLLTX3TLA8jbMHNgZpwx01j6/whY2RVktfMYvmJZo3n9
6XVJTcUVA3QiXb32Ps9OwGpOZQMSR0EKGrXSEUyk8YEGDZmFkZOgy6cUZBuzKRXs
yPqdVtE4gHvuck8T5nrllg==;
X-AuditID: cc870862-345fb700000012f5-3f-596b9e0d6fb1
There's also a lot of youtube videos that could be easier to send and less boring to go through. Ex:
- https://www.youtube.com/embed/bjYhmX_OUQQ?rel=0
- https://www.youtube.com/embed/DXfrfbNk7jo?rel=0
- https://www.youtube.com/embed/poFAzDCGLrI?rel=0
- https://www.youtube.com/embed/5zlnI3Bzslo?rel=0
Here are some things I've found which are simple enough to implement but actually offer substantial gains. Learned mainly from helping partners and parents:
1. Move them to Gmail. Email seems to still be the primary vector for most attacks and Gmail's filters are awesome.
2. Get them on a less permissive OS. Shifting from Windows to OSX/iOS has made a huge difference.
3. Teach them a reasonable password-generating method (correct-horse-battery-staple or some such). They are gonna forget and reset passwords regularly, which is OK. I gave up on getting them to habitually use a password manager.
4. Force (coerce/bribe/cajole) them to use 2FA on critical accounts (email, FB)
5. Tell them lots of anecdotes about hacks, things I spotted in my email, etc. As someone else pointed out, you can work in a lot of useful info in a memorable way in these anecdotes.
Tech does seem to be only part of the solution (and probably not even the major part). I've been doing some gig work for a company [http://www.popcorntraining.com] that does story-based security awareness videos, mainly for corporates. They have pretty good results based on fairly small time investment by the participants.
Sadly, most of the players in this market seem to be focused on big companies at the moment, with a few starting to aim at SMEs. We've bounced around the idea of trying to help the consumer market, but its not yet been worthwhile for them.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's likely that Animats knows what he's doing. He also says that the email contains a link to the real website, not to a scam website. So, if it was sent by a scammer what's the purpose? How does it work? And if it was sent by the company, why are they sending email that looks like a scam?
The mail header entry at the point it leaves FedEx's systems and enters my website is: Received: from pvma00057.prod.fedex.com ([204.135.8.98]:61625 helo=mx28.infosec.fedex.com) by gator4118.hostgator.com with esmtps (TLSv1.2:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:256) (Exim 4.87) (envelope-from ) id 1dWn4C-00092V-Dd for nagle@animats.com; Sun, 16 Jul 2017 12:10:48 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; d=fedex.com; s=edc; c=…
NetRange: 204.135.0.0 - 204.135.255.255
CIDR: 204.135.0.0/16
NetName: FEDEX-2009-BLOCK
NetHandle: NET-204-135-0-0-1
Parent: NET204 (NET-204-0-0-0-0)
NetType: Direct Assignment
OriginAS: AS7726
Organization: FedEx (FEC)
RegDate: 2009-07-20
Updated: 2017-04-29
Ref: https://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-204-135-0-0-1
OrgName: FedEx
OrgId: FEC
Address: 70 FedEx Parkway
City: Collierville
StateProv: TN
PostalCode: 38017
Country: US
RegDate:
Updated: 2014-06-02
Ref: https://whois.arin.net/rest/org/FEC2) Develop or help them develop viable processes for their needs and abilities that will sidestep issues.
This involves a small amount of educating people, less than is needed for real internet literacy. The difference is it makes them literate enough to navigate the parts they actually use, without some huge burden of additional general information that they son&t really need and which will just interfere with them learning the pieces they actually need to know.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I put my mum on Linux Mint, hid the menu launcher and put icons for all the stuff she uses on her desktop, set updates to automatic and put her on a Gmail account on a domanin I own. That and a basic crash course in treat everything as suspicious unless you know it isn't has sufficed so far. If she has any doubts she just rings me but that's rare.
Main reason not to use Linux is because there’s no Microsoft Office support
What really irks me is getting an email like this: Shipping account suspended Dear XXXX, FedEx shipping privileges for account number ending in NNNN have been suspended. To access and update your credit card data, log in to FedEx® Billing Online. Log in today (Button) This just screams "scam", especially since I haven't used the FedEx account in months. When I log into FedEx (not using the link in the email), my acco…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
With SPF, DKIM, DMARC, coupled with blacklists and the reputation system of big mail providers that's making it difficult to host your own email, it's actually quite to impersonate an email address. Try it, then see how many times you can hit a @gmail address.
I found that this does not stop one from sending emails that appear to originate from addresses like info@paypal.com as long as the contents of the email are different from known spam emails. They are not flagged by GMail at all as long as you send them from a reputable email server through services like mailgun.com.