General Question

NuclearWessels's avatar

What should you do when you receive a suspicious link?

Asked by NuclearWessels (1188points) June 6th, 2015

Got an email from a friend I haven’t heard from in a few years, it just says Hi Joe and then the link, and then a signature and ‘sent from iphone’ Sounds suspicious and a quick google search on the main site it links to doesn’t give me clear answers. what should I do?

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10 Answers

syz's avatar

Delete it. It’s spam.

jaytkay's avatar

@NuclearWessels Good eye! Sounds bad.

marinelife's avatar

Don’t open it. Contact the friend and see if their email account was hijacked.

2davidc8's avatar

Contact that friend, preferably via a different means (or send a completely new email if your only way to contact is email) and ask if that email was from him/her.
If your friend’s email account has been hacked, this would do her a favor and alert her..

SQUEEKY2's avatar

It’s spam ,I get those occasionally just delete it.

Response moderated (Spam)
NuclearWessels's avatar

I suppose my actual question would be, how do you ensure a link is safe? Can I scan it somehow?

I’m very reluctant to contact her and ask, it’s my ex from long ago, and don’t want to initiate a dialog. However if she is the one initiating, I’d like to explore the link before I respond.

Is it usual for a spam message to include a persons real name in the email? in the past the ones I’ve gotten have been generic like: “hey check this out”.

johnpowell's avatar

Does your email address contain the word Joe in it? It is easy to write a script that checks the string and looks for first names and then plugs in your first name into the email.

Stinley's avatar

It probably is a virus. Avoid. A virus that has got into someone’s email can see the email address and also the contact name that has been associated with it. So that could explain the joe bit.

If you haven’t heard from this ex for a long time, you’d be better off not replying anyway even if it is a genuine message. Leave it in the past

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