In Wake of Epsilon, Be Wary

Don't you hate it when you get a warning from a financial institution that their email partner was hacked? It's beyond upsetting.

In a recent security newsletter from Sunbelt Security, makers of Vipre Security Software which I run on a couple of computers, there was an article about the Epsilon situation.

Epislon? Huh?

In case you don't know what this is all about, Epsilon handles email for a number of large companies. They were hacked. They said that "so-called" private information like credit card or social security numbers were not part of the heist, but email address data bases by their clients were stolen.

What was even worse was that Epsilon was that they were being targeted. One likes to think they took precautions were taken, but whatever they did wasn't good enough.


As a result, there's a large outpouring of phishing attempts by the cyber-criminals. Look and analyze carefully before you click. If in doubt that it came from your bank, don't click. Contact your bank personally. These phishing emails might ask you to review and/or renew your account information for banks and credit cards.

Takeaway Truth

If it doesn't look right, don't click. Contact your financial institution to check on the validity of any email seeking information from you.

1 comment:

  1. Most email programs these days will alert you if you click on a link that visually has one URL, but actually goes to another.

    It's a good rule of thumb, though, to never furnish ANY information if you got to the site by clicking a email. Better yet, avoid clicking a email at all; if it is a spam, it will probably result in getting more spam.

    It's simple enough to type in your bank's URL - and someone who is not good at typing need only to do it once, and then bookmark the bank's website.

    Now, if I could only convince my wife....

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