AYF/GF 143 | Junk Mail

 

Spam and junk mail are a serious concern. Many of these also pose a security risk and can endanger your chances of becoming fundable. In this episode, Merrill Chandler talks about junk mail and how to get rid of them. Merrill presents several examples of junk mail and describes the scams that are often connected to them. A great episode to catch if you’re concerned about your information security.

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When Junk Mail Impacts Your Fundability™

How to Protect Against Fraud & Phishing

In this episode, we’re going to be doing an addendum to our GetFundableIDProtection.com eBook and a little masterclass that we talk about in the bootcamp, so this is to add to that some specific. When we come back, deep dive into unsubscribing the ways in which the marketers and fraudsters are trying to take advantage of you and ways for you to run a cloaking device over your email.

It won’t be very long, but this is an addendum to one of our previous episodes where we talked about protecting your identity, number one. When you find that identity episode, we have you be able to download a free guide. It’s GetFundableIDProtection.com. This isn’t an addendum to the information you’re going to find there because I’m a little pissed off. It comes in waves. How many of you are sick and tired of junk mail, especially in this case, email junk mail? They call it spam. How many of you have read something where someone is trying to scam you or you don’t know if it’s a scam? We had one client forward us an email where they said that they were part of identity protection but this wasn’t their account. Somebody had found out that they were a part of this service and wanted to build something that was more than their subscription, and they called us to find out what the hell was going on. Let’s get to it.

AYF/GF 143 | Junk Mail

Junk Mail: Even if the business is legit, if there are two unsubscribe buttons, you want to click both of them twice.

 

First of all, I’m going to show you some tips and tricks on how to unsubscribe because there are so many things that we’re not told. I’m my own crash test dummy, so I want to share this with you. Let’s look at this. It’s tiny but notice down at the bottom where it says Unsubscribe Here, but then way down at the bottom, there’s also another Unsubscribe. I’m going to show you how it shows up. What we’re going to do is you unsubscribe from both twice. Always look for two unsubscribes. One is from the main list that is selling these different types of email spam lists. The other one is for the specific offer. If you don’t unsubscribe from the specific offer, you’ll keep getting the specific offer. If you don’t unsubscribe from the family of spam, then you’re going to get other family members in that same spam list.

If you don't unsubscribe from a family of spam, then you're going to get other family members from that same spam list. Click To Tweet

The bottom line is if you don’t understand what I’m saying, then you want to make sure that on every junk mail or email spam that you get, look for two unsubscribe buttons. They’ll always be in the bottom quarter of the email. You’re always going to look for the Unsubscribe Here. There are two different ones. I’m clicking on the one and notice this one is not letting me get in. Hit Reload just in case and then quit. Go down to the very bottom one, click Unsubscribe and it’s also unavailable. These are done and you hit Reload. Over here, notice that it shows, “This site can’t be reached.” That’s what you’re going to find in this. You always click Reload to make sure that it has expired or you exhausted all the opportunities to get rid of it. We’ve done both of these, so let’s go to our next one.

AYF/GF 143 | Junk Mail

Junk Mail: Never give any of your information to anyone over the phone. Always ask for the option to have a website to go to, and then look for the security measures that they use to make sure that it’s a legitimate location.

 

We want to unsubscribe or click on the unsubscribe buttons twice. This one is a little more legitimate because I ordered things from here, but now I’m on their list. At the very bottom, you’ll see that Unsubscribe. The little window pops up and there’s only one of them, so I click Unsubscribe. It’s going to take me to a window, you’re familiar with these, and we hit Unsubscribe. I’m going to go through a couple of different iterations of this. Sometimes, you’re going to find that there are only question marks or where your spam function removed all of the details, but you still want to attempt to unsubscribe because the ones that are in here sometimes are the Unsubscribe buttons. We’re going to click on this and what pops up is, “This site can’t be reached.” That means that’s not an unsubscribe. You’ve tried both of them. Those opt-outs are all peachy. Let’s go to another one.

Vivint is a significant provider of a number of home services. You know that you’re on a list if, at the bottom, there are two unsubscribe buttons. Even if the business is legit but there are two unsubscribes, you want to click both of them twice. We’re going to click on the top one first. What does it do? It gives us an address. You’re going to notice this is the list of all of the emails that I unsubscribed from. Merrill.Chandler, I’m going to unsubscribe from that. I’m clicking on that unsubscribe button again and it’s letting me do it twice.

AYF/GF 143 | Junk Mail

 

If we have names in there otherwise, they will put a dot in there to keep you on the list because most of us, if my email is [email protected], they’ll put a dot in there because they want to keep it on the list that most of us don’t remember to remove the dot. I always universally and absolutely remove myself both with the dot between my name. We’re going to go to the very bottom Unsubscribe and click on that one as well. What do we find? A different-looking opt-out. I’m going to do MerrillChandler without the dot, and then we’re going to do it again and click on it the second time. You see all these different pages to opt-out from because they’re all going somewhere else. You want to be able to opt-out of everything and you know you’re being successful when they’re sending you to a completely different website to opt-out of.

The last thing that I want to show you is junk mail that’s looking like invoices. Look who it’s being sent to, Tariq Jave Danjum, but it was ended up in our in-basket. “Dear Valued Customer, thank you for your recent purchase with Lamphered LLC by Amazon. Your account has been set up for Auto debit from your saved billing on the account in the next 24 hours. The item will be shipped in 48 hours and you will receive a confirmation email once it’s shipped. You’ll receive another email with a Tracking Number. If you want to cancel or modify your order, get in touch with us before it gets delivered,” and then it gives a phone number. Rarely are these ever 800 numbers. “Here’s the order information, a Forex machine 56″ Dual.” Look how technical it is and the random address, “Mode, your checking account.”

AYF/GF 143 | Junk Mail

 

What is the purpose of this? What they want you to do is call that phone number and say, “That is not my purchase,” and then they are going to phish for more information to confirm your identity and steal more data points from you so that they can use it. Likely, they’ll say, “Give us your checking account number. That’s how we need to verify that we’re talking to the right person.” Do not respond to this stuff. This is absolute craziness. You’re watching for these very things that make it look like you’ve already done something or fraud has already been perpetrated on you and they’re going to fix it for you if it’s not your account by getting more information.

The final one I want to show you here is insane. Here is another company that is a legitimate service. It’s called Norton 360 with LifeLock Ultimate Plus. That sounds legit because most of us recognize Norton 360 as software protection and the others of us might remember or think about LifeLock. They’re doing the same thing that we looked at in the last email. “Thank you for placing an order with us. Your subscription has been successfully renewed and updated. The charged amount will be reflected on your statement. Here’s Norton LifeLock, $299.88, and then Premium Support Chat, $100, for a total of $399.” They want you to do the same thing and contact them. Look at the very bottom, “If you want to cancel your order, please call us 1-800.”

AYF/GF 143 | Junk Mail

 

Look how funky the format of the phone number is. Notice, “If you want to cancel your order, please call us so that we can verify your credit card number. What credit card number did you use?” You read all sixteen of them. “What’s the expiration date and pin code? Yes, this is you. I’m sorry. We’ll cancel your order.” Now, you’ve given them your information. The fraudsters are going to be in stealth mode. We got to have anti-stealth technology to support it and I’m here every step of the way. If you’re already a member of the Funding Hackers, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we get together and have Q&A discussions. At the bootcamp, we go through an entire section on identity protection.

GetFundableIDProtection.com is where you can go to download the information that is the basis of what we’ve discussed. Be careful. Never give any of your information to anyone over the phone. Always ask for the option to have a website to go to and then look for the security measurements that they’re using like Authorize.net. Make sure that it’s a legitimate location and make your purchases that way. Opt-out of everything, including your emails and make sure that you be careful of these spam and phishing strategies that are trying to deceive you into giving information that you believe they may already have. Be wise and we’ll see you in the next episode.

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