If you're a customer of Best Buy (BBY), Citigroup (C), or any one of the 2,200 global brands that relies on email marketing giant Epsilon, you may have received a rather alarming notice over the weekend. Epsilon has reported a security breach that may have compromised your email address and name.
While it may at first sound like the identity thieves walked away with very little, the potential for damage can be great, say security experts. For example, armed with your name, email address, and the name of a company with whom you do business, identity thieves can send an authentic-looking but bogus Best Buy email asking you to supply your credit card information or other personal information. This can later be used to pilfer your financial accounts.
What You Can Do
Here are some steps consumers can take when receiving an unsolicited email, according to Kristensen:
- Open a new browser and visit the website that supposedly sent the email; check to see if it's promoting the same offer that has been sent to you unsolicited;
- Mouse over the link contained in the email and look at the lower left corner of the screen to see if the domain name matches the company that is purportedly sending the email;
- If you must click on the link, once it's open it should still show the same domain name. If it doesn't -- and it asks you for financial information like a bank account number or social security number, do not provide the information. If the opened link now has a different domain name, although it's not requesting financial information, the identity thief may have opted to infect your computer with a virus instead.
- Best advice of all is to avoid clicking on links or opening attachments placed in unsolicited emails.
- And, finally, keep your security software updated.
See full article from DailyFinance: http://srph.it/gXgLbf
