With all the talk of getting "hacked" in the media these days I thought I would take a second to clarify what is really the most common occurance. Bad guys don't actually have to write super secret programs to get to your data. They just have to trick you into giving them what they want. So here's a very good example of how they fool us all:

You get an email from Apple about problems with your ID.


Sounds legit. Yep, come to think of it, I have had some problems lately. I better click that big blue link right there in the middle.

STOP. Let's take a closer look at this email.


If you click on the sender's email address, you'll get a better look at who is really sending it. In this case it's just some random @me.com email address. Needless to say, Apple's not going to send you an email from some guy's personal email account. But let's go a little further…

There's a very useful feature in mail that allows you to see where a link is going before you click on it. Hover your mouse over any link and it will reveal the URL it's pointing to. In this case, it's not Apple. It's pointing to some random number IP address. So what started as a pretty convincing email, after looking a little closer we see it's a fishing scam. They're trying to get us to click that link. This is where you should just delete the email and move on. But let's say you didn't. Let's say you fell for the trap and you clicked the email anyway. What happens now…?

It takes you here:


"Scotty you were totally wrong! It took me to Apple.com to log into my account." Nope, look a little closer.

While it looks exactly like Apple's ID page, check out the URL address in the menu bar at the top:


You're about to give your AppleID and password to some guy in Uzbekistan and the first thing he's going to do is log into your account, change your security questions, wipe all your devices, change your password, harvest your email account for useful info so he can beg your close friends for money via email, sell your contacts to a spamming company, and maybe even take your hair appointment because he has your calendar also. Other than that, there's nothing to worry about.

Long story short. don't worry about being "hacked". You're not going to get "hacked". Worry about why you're being asked for your email address and password. As you've seen here, clicking the link does nothing. it's the decisions you make once you land on that webpage that impact your digital life. That's it. Just because a page looks like you think it should, doesn't mean it's the real page. If you are in fact worried about an email you get and think it actually is real, simply type the web address in yourself.

P.S. don't join open wifi networks that don't have passwords.