Despite all of the high-tech hacking you see on TV Shows and in the news the number one way that criminals get into your system is when employees click on links in email.

Many of those emails appear to come from friends even though your friends email may never have been hacked.   Criminals are buying lists of your friends and associates from Facebook and other social network.   They then make the email look like it came from your friend even though it really came from some other account.

While it may not be the case forever, for now, most of these criminals seem to have done very poorly in school and the easiest way to identify them is with awkward English and misspellings.  The other way to identify them is if they ask up front for you to confirm passwords or personal information.

Any time someone asks for your personal information online or passwords stop and ask yourself if you need to give it and if you are confident the site is legitimate.    If you have a question about whether or not you are on a legitimate site exit your browser and enter the email enter the web address manually.