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Spam on Social Media

By January 28, 2014October 21st, 2021Blog

Here at Sendio we consider it our job to keep your email safe, continuous and nice and clean, we only wish we could do the same for the rest of your messages online. Unfortunately, email isn’t the only place that you run the risk of spam and phishing attempts.

Did you know that between LinkedIn, Facebook, Google and Twitter, experts have found that 1 in every 200 messages contain spam? According to Mashable, spam on Facebook alone represents a $200 million a year industry.  It’s actually because of spam solutions and growing awareness (kinda like ours) that spammers are moving to social networks. While many users are vigilant when using their actual email (with the exception of Sendio users who have forgotten that spam was ever a prominent part of life,) that vigilance wanes when using a service not so widely known to carry spam.  So while we’ve got your inbox covered, we’d like to offer a few tips on how to be careful when tweeting, liking, +ing and just about anything else you do online.

Check your links.

We’ve talked about the importance of link-checking in the past and we’ll stand by it now as an excellent way to ensure you’re not visiting any malicious sites based on social network links. All it takes is hovering your mouse over the link instead of clicking. This will bring up a small box in your browser that shows the actual URL. If it doesn’t match the description or looks suspicious at all don’t click it. Simple as that.

Stop Liking So Many Things.

We don’t want to sound like grumps here, but often social media spam is spread through sharing and liking. Attractive images are paired with a request for likes (often in return for some kind of support for charity or a funny outcome). The spammers then wait for the like-count of the page to rise and sell when they’ve hit their mark. By liking these obviously fake posts, you’re helping the scammers win. And you don’t want that right? So when it comes to the reputable Facebook pages you know and love, like away, but try to control yourself will you?

Don’t Accept Requests from Those You Don’t Know.

Sure, everybody wants to make friends, but not when those friends are secretly harvesting your email addresses in order to send you spam or malicious emails. By accepting friend requests from total strangers, you’re putting your email at risk of being plagued by junk or even phishers. You know, unless you have Sendio.

Use Common Sense.

We know, we know. We keep harping on this one. But it’s only because we care so darn much. An ounce of foreknowledge and common sense online is worth a pound of cure, and the best way for you to make sure that you’re being safe is to use common sense. Get a message from an attractive single that you’ve never met in your life? They’re probably not looking for a date so much as phishing information. Get a message from your friend but it sounds nothing like him? (Think invasion of the body snatchers.) Try calling him and asking if he sent it. Using your common sense can add a whole lot of piece of mind and stop spammers, scammers and phishers in their tracks.

One more heads up: Facebook and YouTube were the most infected networks so be especially careful on those sites. Remember good email security service can provide a lot of protection from scammers and phishers, but what about when you’re using other messaging services? No matter what you’re doing online, make sure to check your links, be careful when talking to strangers and use good, old common sense. That being said, it’s always nice to know that whatever you do online, your inbox is always covered with Sendio. When it comes to email no company provides the multi-tiered email security that we do. Our many layers of protection can often identify scammers before they ever reach your inbox, leaving you with a cleaner, safer email solution that delivers only the mail you want, and nothing else.



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