by Chris Behnken | E74 Chief Technology Officer
25. July 2012 17:21
Undoubtedly you receive many emails from Paypal, Ebay, your credit card company, or your bank. Usually they are privacy or policy update notifications. Sometimes they may wish to alert you to a new feature or service that they are offering. There is certainly nothing wrong with these types of emails, but you have to be cautious AS SOON as any of these are asking for your personal information.
Often they will claim that your account will be suspended if you don't log in and re-provide your password, date of birth, or social security number. Please stop and think when you receive an email like this. Why would the financial institution that you have an account with not already have this information?
A simple rule to follow is never click any links in any emails that request any sensitive information from you. The links may appear to go to www.paypal.com, but are really going to another site that is just pretending to be Paypal. Instead of following these links if you open your web browser manually and just type in https://www.paypal.com you can be assured you are actually going to their site. Please note the https. The https protocol means the site is secure and they will not be able to easily pretend to be something they are not. If you ever question whether an email is legitimate or not please never reply to it or follow its instructions. Call your financial institution and they can tell you if they sent that email.
One other type of email you may receive is from companies claiming that your domain name is about to expire. While this may actually be a real email, often it is a third party company trying to get you to move your domain registration to them. Please be cautious and keep receipts if you have registered your own domain name. Check to see that the email is coming from the same company, if it is not, contact the company you registered the domain name with to check the status of it.
If you elected to have Element 74 purchase and maintain your domain name then you need not worry. We will automatically renew your domain name and be sure you do not lose it.