How do I check if a site is legit?

[gues77]

I got an email from a women name Janice Reed with the email address [email protected]. She said there's an opportunity for me to earn money doing surveys. Do you think this is a legit opportunity?

[mewmis]

I use the survey police site. It gives you info on alot of sites.

[pwwbear]

First of all, email addresses can be faked by those who know how. I have gotten emails from supposedly from myself!

Second, if it comes unsolicited, chances are it is probley not worth it. Most make money ventures are pyrimid types, or you have to pay to get the information which turns out that you have to sell the same stuff to others.

If you want to know exactly who sent you the email, find out how to show FULL HEADERS on your email program. If you have hotmail, I don't think you can do it, but full headers look something like this:

X-Apparently-To: xxxxxxxxxx.ca via 76.13.9.99; Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:41:05 -0700
X-YahooFilteredBulk: 196.25.211.9
X-Originating-IP: [196.25.211.9]
Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Authentication-Results: mta106.mail.re4.yahoo.com from=telkomsa.net; domainkeys=neutral (no sig)
Received: from 196.25.211.9 (EHLO telkomsa.net) (196.25.211.9) by mta106.mail.re4.yahoo.com with SMTP; Mon, 24 Mar 2008 07:41:05 -0700
Received: (qmail 18770 invoked from network); 24 Mar 2008 14:40:18 -0000
Received: from unknown (HELO User) ([email protected]@[82.128.18.228]) (envelope-sender <[email protected]>) by O (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for <[email protected]>; 24 Mar 2008 14:40:14 -0000
Reply-to: <[email protected]>
From: "ALHAJI BUNU USMAN FAROUK." <[email protected]>
Subject: PLEASE CLARIFY THE FOLLOWING INFORMATION ABOUT YOUR CONTRACT PAYMENT DIVERSION.
Date: Sun, 23 Mar 2008 15:33:13 -0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1251"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Priority: 3
X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 6.00.2600.0000
X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V6.00.2600.0000
Content-Length: 2564
This is from a scam email I got.

Cut and paste the full header here:
http://headertool.apelord.com/

Using my example I see the email is routed as follows:
76.13.9.99 United States* Whois Google
196.25.211.9 South Africa* Whois Google
196.25.211.9 South Africa* Whois Google
196.25.211.9 South Africa* Whois Google
196.25.211.9 South Africa* Whois Google
82.128.18.228 Nigeria* Whois Google

The last one is usually the orgin part.

You can click on the whois link to find more info about the sender, or the google link will do a google search.

[1764]

I also believe it to be fake.

I received emails from "[email protected]" (that was the sender address listed in both the email and the full header)
The subject was "More attempts to log in to your PayPal account"

I sent it to [email protected] and they replied saying it was indeed a phishing scam and they were working to stop it.

So please be careful! Even email coming from trusted emails/sites can be faked.
I don't know if that person works for paypal or what... but it's scary how good they are at this.

[mewmis]

That is very good to know. I apparently sent, every one on my contact list, an email this a.m. (while I still slept) advertising electronics.

[Wise Shopper]

Thank you to pwwbear for the page showing information about a website or email being legit or not.
I have a spam filter but it doesn't catch everything. I have heard of spammers out there now who are impersonating real companies like banks etc. and it's really scary.
I also received an email from Pay Pal that was similar to the spam one mentioned in an above post.
I phoned Pay Pal and asked them about it.
They said they do send out some emails to customers now and again if they have money left in their Pay Pal accounts and have not yet transferred it into their bank accounts if they have a business like on E Bay or something. They want to be sure the account is still active if money has been there for a long period of time. Otherwise they send the money back to whoever bought something.
I thought that was kind of weird but I guess they have to monitor accounts and account activity.

The best thing to do is to go into the REAL Pay Pal account and read about how it works and what they do. I did and they talk about what phishing is and what to look for regarding getting a fake Pay Pal email.

Regards.

[txzack]

I got the same email yesterday. Unfortunately, I replied to ask for more information before I checked it out, so I'm probably going to be getting some spam for a while... not the worst of all outcomes, thankfully. I did quickly regain my composure and check out the domain name on www.samspade.org though.

The domain comes back registered to someone in North Carolina supposedly - with a really weird reference to a location China. But the IP address for the domain comes back to Bulgaria - a sure sign of a scam. So, sadly, my guess is this is a big fake.

I had deleted the email before I got a chance to pull up the full headers, but I'm willing to bet that the header information would confirm this.