I received an email early yesterday morning that was quite perplexing. You ask why I would write a blog post about a fucking email message? I had never heard of this company called wetransfer.
At first I thought perhaps a viewer or reader of my content was sending me a question. The title of this email message was alarming.
amsertocep1986@gmail.com sent you files via WeTransfer
This email message was formatted in html. Here is quoted verbatim the full email message:
amsertocep1986@gmail.com
sent you some files
1 file, 11.8 KB in total ? Will be deleted on 9 October, 2017
Get your filesResale of the best digital goods at low prices only with us – https://goo.gl/Afnw6a
Download link
https://wetransfer.com/downloads/6f60e707af46eb43a74799be3ab4cbaa20171002074916/ad4b0e1c826089c5dab7b295edfcc7e320171002074916/9f5ef3
1 file
Read info.docx
To make sure our emails arrive, please add noreply@wetransfer.com to your contacts.
Get more out of WeTransfer, get Plus
About WeTransfer ? Help ? Legal
As you can see, the actual email message included a spam call to action and hyper link using a shortened url service. I could have just deleted this email and called it a day. However, I hate receiving email spam and people that are deceiving.
I almost never open up suspicious email messages and I don’t recommend that you do. I will share some tips to you that I have learned over the years as a computer technician, when it comes to suspicious email(s). If you don’t feel right about opening a message, then don’t do it.
Also, it is recommended that you install anti-virus software, preferably with a real time email scanner. Software these days is not perfect. However, just in case you become a curious cat, and open a email message that is not familiar to you, your anti-virus/email filter just might pick up any nefarious activity.
I was curious about this company wetransfer that this email message was from. Remember, that it is not that difficult to create a phishing email message or one that tricks you into clicking on a link. You can hover your mouse button over any hyper links in an email message.
Try to find out if this email even is from a legitimate source. Also, you can view the source of an email message to try to find more information about the source. You can try to look for the originating Internet protocal address, return path, and other header information.
Another tip is to peform a quick google search of the from email address. This email actually had the perpetrator’s gmail address in the body of this message. However, since it is a gmail address, this email address might not even be a legit address.
There are multiple websites on the Internet that track spammers. They will add email addresses to their databases if they get enough complaints. If you are not familiar with a certain website or company, you can perform a quick google search to see if they are legitimate.
In this case, I had never heard of WeTransfer before. I performed some quick google searches and found out that they are a managed file transfer service. This company and website actually has a legitimate purpose.
However, I was still pissed off I received spam via a file transfer service. I was given a link to this website that was to expire in seven days. The file name was info.docx.
Caveat emptor, I don’t recommend you open email messages like this because of potential of contracting malware, spyware, virus, etc. Also, you need to become careful of a phishing expedition. You might want to use a computer that is not connected to a network.
You might also want to use a standard windows account and NOT one that has administrator rights. Just because this looked like a harmless Microsoft Word document, does not mean that it couldn’t be something nefarious. Both shortened url and link in the phony info.docx file forwarded to two-dollars.info.
This in essence was a fucking spam email message.