Click Bait Archives - Geek for Hire

8 Tips For Determining Fake News Sites

Posted on November 22, 2016November 18, 2016 by Gail Eddy in Click Bait, Facebook, Malware, Social Media, Tips, Virus

Over the last week or so, I’ve been hearing more about “Fake News” websites. I’ve been aware, for a while, of websites that seem more biased, but I hadn’t been aware of websites with actual fake news. An off-shoot of this issue is that these websites sometimes include malware. Several of our customers got a virus in the week leading up to the election from clicking on those types of “news” stories.

Have you read any of these news stories? Many of them surround the impact fake news has had on Facebook and other Social Media. For example this article from the NY Times, or this one from the Washington Post, or this one from CNN .

What to watch out for:

Does the site have a lot of “click bait”? That’s a web site with pop ups that you have to click through before you can read the actual content. This is different from the sites which make you watch an advertisement before you get to the actual story. Click bait will take you to another site entirely.
Can you verify the news item with a reputable source? If it’s real news, there should be something on one of the national news websites like CNN, NYT, MSNBC, USA Today, or even the Financial Times. If it’s a local news stories, an NBC, CBS, ABC, or Fox local affiliate should have information.
Does the URL for the website seem odd in some way? For example a url that ends with ” .co “, or ” .su “, or ” .ru “.
Does the headline match the story?
When a news story seems too fantastic to believe, I head over to Snopes to see what they have to say. From their website, Snopes: “began in 1995 as an expression of … interest in researching urban legends has since grown into what is widely regarded by folklorists, journalists, and laypersons alike as one of the World Wide Web’s essential resources.”
Is it on a list of “fake news” websites? There are several of these lists floating around. Here is the one published by USA Today.
Is it satire? Several websites are satire, which is not fake news. Satirical sites which come to mind include the Onion, and the Borowitz Report.
Check the date. Is it a recent news event, or something from months or even years ago that is being re-purposed as new news?

Chris Eddy of Geek For Hire, Inc. has been providing computer service to families and small businesses with Mac’s and PC’s for the past fourteen years. His company is highly rated by both the BBB (Better Business Bureau) and by Angie’s List. You can find more on our website. Geek For Hire, Inc. provides onsite service (Tier 3) to the Denver / Boulder / Front Range area and remote service throughout North America.

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How To Spot An eMail Scam

Posted on August 4, 2015January 5, 2016 by Gail Eddy in Click Bait, Hackers, Malware, Phishing

The scammers are getting better and better. The text of the email looks legit; the email address looks legit; the graphics are professional. How can you tell when your phone company is contacting you vs. when a scammer is impersonating your phone company?

A client received this email last week and gave us a call.

Everything looked good on the email that she forwarded to me. I hovered over all of the links to see what website they actually pointed to. I looked at the logos, and they actually looked like the real ones. A quick search shows that both “Digital Vault” and “@Ease” are real CenturyLink services. Even the deadline, almost three months in the future, seemed like a legitimate phone company corporation deadline.

The only trouble was that our client had no recollection of signing up for a CenturyLink cloud based storage or “Digital Vault”.

She said that she was going to call CenturyLink about this and I urged her to call a number that she already had, rather than any phone numbers included in the email. When she called CenturyLink, they told her it was a scam and asked that she forward the email to them.

So that’s my advice this week – If you receive an email from a company you have a business relationship with, AND, you’re not expecting an email from then, give them a call on a number you already have saved for them.

Beware of Click Bait!

Posted on May 12, 2015December 2, 2019 by Gail Eddy in Click Bait, Hackers, Phishing, Social Media, Tips

This morning, I was doing one of my morning rituals which includes reading through the recent posts on Facebook, and found that a friend of mine who lives on the east coast, liked a story. I worked with him many years ago. He was the manager of a major project which I worked on for many years. This was the largest project in my career, and I know that this system is still “alive” today because I have served a local customer twice who is dispatched by this system. Since I respect my friend, and he doesn’t casually like everything, the things that he does like tends to get my attention. The first thing I did was to like the story too.

The story told of a mother beating her son on national television because he was participating in the recent riots in Baltimore. My friend liked it, so it must be legit. I clicked on the link to the story, which went to a blogsite which I had never seen or heard of before. The content of the page had only a brief retelling of the title of the story, plus several advertisements, but there was no link to the salacious original video that grabbed my attention. Since I didn’t see what I expected, I thought this was a problem with the tight security settings of my daily browser (Firefox, with several add-ons), so I copied the URL from my “high security” browser and pasted it into my “low security” browser which works with everything (Internet Explorer), and fetched the page. The same page was displayed, but this time with many popup advertisements (pop-over and pop-under) which were really concerning to me. There was no salacious video or a link to it. I shut this down fast.

Still being interested in the salacious story, I went to YouTube and searched for the general words of the title of the story, and found several direct links to the video – without additional advertisement or commentary.

In this case, I fell prey to “Click Bait”. I saw a story that interested me, thought it was legit, and clicked on it. It wasn’t legit. I will be doing a total system scan of my computer to check for any residual nastiness.

If you think you’ve fallen prey to “Click Bait”, the best thing to do is to scan your machine for anything malicious. If you need help, give us a call!

Information about Geek For Hire, Inc.

I’ve created a Free Report on what to look for to protect yourself from “phishing” scams. Click here to receive it!

Chris Eddy of Geek For Hire, Inc. has been providing computer service to families and small businesses with Mac’s and PCs for the past eighteen years. Angie’s List and the BBB rate Geek For Hire very highly. You can find more on our website, or give us a call 303-618-0154. Geek For Hire, Inc. provides onsite service (Tier 3 support) to the Denver / Boulder / Front Range area as well as remote service throughout North America.

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