The internet is an essential part of modern living, but connecting exposes us to the threat of malicious malware, cyber attacks and the like. Many protect themselves with subscriptions to anti-virus services from McAfee, Geek Squad, etc. who email you when your subscription is expiring. Given the widespread practice of phishing, where criminals try to trick you into giving them your sensitive information, how can you tell if an email is legit?
Here’s what to look for:
- “From” address is a professional gmail account like: viveknareshvarshasagargic2013@gmail.com
- Uses typical business salutation: Greetings and Salutations Esteemed Customer INSERT NAME.
- Email says: It brings us immense joy to notice a renewal invoice has been deducted from your account. Flowery verbiage is a hallmark of legitimate business communiqués.
- Subject/verb agreement issues show that English is not the primary language of the technician. Everyone knows all really good computer techs are from Mumbai or some such place. Americans suck at tech.
- The subscription price isn’t a fake looking round number like $300. That $439.72 charge is authentic.
- You have somehow already paid this, but have a limited window to cancel. Have your PayPal or credit card info ready merely to verify it’s you.
- You can’t reply to the email, but they provide a handy, international phone number to call.
- It’s signed by a manager with a name like Carl Hopkins, whose mailing address is in California or Arizona so clearly the top brass is in the US. His foreign-sounding email, sarojsarojkumaryadavsarojyadav58@gmail, indicates his secretary sent this.
- The notice wound up in your spam folder. When it comes to anti-virus, the bots at Yahoo and other email providers are notoriously unable to recognize legitimate emails.
- You’ve received multiple notices from different managers with various prices. They value your business so much they reminded you about the renewal 49 times. Today. That doesn’t count the previous 537 notices in your spam folder.
Peg-o-Leg's Ramblings 
Thanks for the advice Peg! I regularly receive emails warning me that my Norton account is going to expire soon, when I’m pretty sure it’s been expired for 6 years or so. Obviously their calendar is different than mine.
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Hey there, stranger! How nice to see a familiar face. Er, top of head. I haven’t been on WordPress in so long everything in the Editor has changed. I still haven’t received an email notice of my post, so I didn’t think they had gone out. How the hell are you?
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Nice to have you back! Yes, WordPress is still moving the large and small furniture around – it is a wonder that anyone can post anything anymore… (that is a lot of ‘any’s…)
Your advice is timely – I just received another invite to renew – from a company that gave me the runaround for weeks when I wanted to cancel my subscription!
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Don’t fall for it – it’s better to get hacked! Thanks, good to be back.
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Yeah, this Norton dude is a real jerk. So needy and desperate. Doesn’t he know by now what ‘ghosting’ means? Get the hint, man!
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Here I am, half awake on a soulless Tuesday morning contemplating life choices when out of the blue I decide to check WordPress and lo and behold – it’s Peggles! A blast of sunshine on this frigid January day. Does this mean you’re back? And will blog regularly? Or will you disappear again, fading back into the bloggy shadows?
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Miss Darla! Squeeee! Oh how I’ve missed you. I haven’t been writing much. As in not at all. Then someone put a spam comment on an old post and I was doing a deep dive in the stacks, remembering all the fun times.
Geez Louise, the format has changed. I wasn’t sure I even got this posted. In fact, I didn’t get an email showing I had posted something, did you happen to?
How the heck are you? Not much new here. I want to hear all about you.
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Oh how I love doing the deep dive into old posts! What a glorious time we all had back then. I am good – settling into middle age kicking and screaming. One kid graduates college and one high school this year. I dream of retiring and moving to the Bahamas to pursue my lifelong goal of doing nothing with my toes in the sand. I don’t write blog posts at all anymore so I would be lost in this new format. But I am writing a book! Yes! I have the title so far and that’s a start, right?
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You mean the flowery verbiage doesn’t mean they’re just being friendly? And here I thought I was their special customer. Sheesh! I especially like the return email addresses like realbusinessnokidding@gmail.com. Welcome back, even if it’s only for a minute.
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You are their most specialist customer ever, Dear Lady!
Nice to see you – it has been a loooong while. 🙂
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😊
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