Be suspicious of of emails that want your personal information. And don’t click links in an email. They're often not who they say they are(ebay, paypal, rich person from Siera Leone).
They’re known as phishing emails. They are theves, "phishing" for personal info to steal your ID.

Ebay’s a popular one. The criminals send emails claiming they are from ebay. A lot of people have ebay accounts. So you might assume it is an ebay email. They say to click a link….it takes you to a site that looks like ebay, but it’s the criminals site. They ask for personal info, they use that info to get more info, effectively stealing your ID. Then they steal from your account or buy things billed to your account.


Here’s the best fraud email I ever got, claiming to be from the ncua:

Account Info Verification

Dear FCU holder account,
As part of our security measures, we regularly screen activity in Federal Credit Unions (FCU) network.We recently noticed the following issue on your account: A recent review of your account determined that we require some additional information from you in order to provide you with secure service. For your protection, we have limited access to your account until additional security measures can be completed. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. You must click the link below and fill in the form on the following page to complete the verification process. Click here to update your account.

When you suspect a fraud email, do a google search about it. Even a non-leading search like("National Credit Union" account email) turned up this 1st result: http://www.ncua.gov/Phishing/phishing.htm

I can't tell novice computer users this enough, sometimes expert ones need to know too. There are so many scammer out there.