The civil war being fought in Syria is of great concern to many people and this fact is being exploited by scammers and identity thieves who have sent an out email purporting to be from Fox News with a headline that reads “US deploys 25,000 troops in Syria.  Within the text of the email is a link to breaking news stories about an invasion of Syria by American forces.  Some of the scam emails even have headlines suggesting the start of World War III.   Unfortunately if you clicked on this link you unwittingly would download a keystroke logging malware program that would steal all of the information from your computer, tablet or smartphone including credit card information, banking information and passwords which would lead to your becoming a victim of identity theft.

TIPS

Trust me, you can’t trust anyone.  Whenever you receive an email , you can never be sure of who actually sent you the email.  It could appear to come from a legitimate source, but the email address of the sender might be slightly, but unnoticeably  different from the real email address of the legitimate sender the identity thief is pretending to be.  Other times, the email account of legitimate companies and people may be hacked so that you actually are receiving an email from a legitimate address, but the email is tainted with malware.  For this reason you should never click on links in emails unless you are absolutely positive that it is legitimate.  In the case of the Fox News email scam, you would be better off going directly to the Fox News website, if you wanted to follow up on the story safely.  Also of critical importance is to make sure that your security software and your anti-malware software are installed and constantly updated.