News Post

I have a web mail account that I don’t use for much except for ordering things. This helps to keep most of the spam in one place, away from my real correspondence with friends an family. This morning I checked the account for the first time in a couple of weeks, and the first message in the Inbox was a confirmation of a ticket purchase from Delta Airlines.

I thought this was a bit strange, because I haven’t bought a ticket recently, but I am scheduled to go to Chicago for ABA TECHSHOW in April, and I thought it might have something to do with that. So I opened the email. It had a ticket confirmation number, but no dates or destination. And it looked very strange. First, there was no Delta logo, just text. And the message, which had a zip file attached, instructed me to open the file for my passenger itinerary . Well, this set off alarm bells, so instead of opening the file I checked my Current Travel folder and, sure enough, my real confirmation from Delta, which I had received at the time I purchased the ticket, was filed away there. Returning to the Inbox, which was pretty full of junk, I then noticed 4 more of these “confirmation” email messages from “Delta.” They all got a quick delete without opening.

I don’t know how the spammers knew that I often fly Delta. Maybe they just got lucky. I do know this, though: It pays to be alert, especially when dealing with routine types of email and things you might normally expect to receive. Don’t get caught by this one.