Spotting a phishing scam

I recently received an email, which looked like it was from PayPal, but I instantly could see it was a phishing scam, however they do seem to be getting better at mimicking. Below is the image of the email, the number of errors that highlight it is a phishing scam is in double figures, how many can you spot? I do not want to point them all out, that would be helping the criminals.

I will point out an obvious one, which I imagine they would find hard to correct, that is at the top it says 'Dear Client', this is not specific enough to be genuine email from a company that knows more details about you than just your email address. Some phishing emails would replace 'Client' and put the word of your email address before the '@' symbol e.g. Dear Smith_John, this would also highlight a phishing scam.

My general advice on receiving emails is:

1. Read the email, do not just click on the link, even if it looks urgent, that is what the scammers are counting on.
2. If you have no instigated an email e.g. requested a password reset, then it is best to assume it is a scam.
3. Do NOT use any links provided in the email, instead go to the companies web site through a link of your own (bookmark) or from a search engine. The web site address should have a HTTPS prefix, not just a HTTP.  
4. If the offer sounds to good to be true, then it is a scam.
5. If there is just one thing that does not look right e.g. spelling mistake, poor grammar or poor quality logo then it is a phishing scam.

Email scam from Broad Oak toiletries

I received an email a few days ago regarding an invoice from Broad Oak Toiletries. The email was very plain, but looked like a normal email. The email was from a person called Sue Mockridge and included an attached. At first I thought the person had just sent it to the wrong person and I considered forwarding it on to our accounts department, then I briefly thought about opening the invoice, but thank God I did not. After looking on the net I found out it was a malicious scam and deleted the email.

My advice to anyone is that if you receive an email you are not expecting with an attachment do not open it, that must be rule one. Best thing to do is use Google and check if anyone else has reported it, if not still do not open it, do a bit of research into the company it came from and even contact the company before opening it.

Outlook.com delete inbox messages

Just went into my Outlook.com account, which had about 17 pages of messages in my Inbox, I then deleted a few messages (approx 5) and all of a sudden I noticed that the number of pages had gone down to 3!!!

After looking into it the all messages have been put in a sub folder off the deleted directory called POP. I do not know why this has been done, but I think it might relate to the rubbish Outlook.com app on my Android phone. Lately Microsoft just keep causing me problems.

Outlook.com First Impressions

Outlook.com is the new email service from Microsoft, which is designed to replace its Hotmail service. I received an email to my hotmail account with a link to upgrade to the new service, simply clicking the link upgraded the service almost instantly. My first impressions are good, here are some of the pros and cons I have found so far.

Pros

Clean looking more modern feel, more Windows 8.
Option to delete message from within the message line.
Sweep option to help clean up the inbox.
More email settings including an automated holiday reply option.


Cons

Need for larger screen, does not work well on a netbook.
Does not give a page number, just gives you the current page and options to more back forward and to a specific date.

These are currently my first impressions of the new email service, I imagine the more I use it the more will appear.