How can I tell if e-mails that claim to be from my bank regarding my online account are real? I get messages that say I need to log in by clicking a link in the e-mail to verify my account.
As with all unsolicited e-mail, you should delete such messages without opening them. If you believe there could be some problem with an online financial account, go back to the documentation you received when you opened the account and use the logon or contact information provided to you in writing by the financial institution. Because e-mail phishing exploits are so prevalent, you should be sure that you are reading your e-mail only in plain text and that you have turned off the preview-window feature.
Clicking on the subject line to open an e-mail message is a real inconvenience, but is nowhere near the trouble of reformatting your system and reinstalling everything from scratch. Web mail systems can be more difficult to work with safely if they do not provide for disabling the mail-preview window, and I realize that very few readers will set their desktop e-mail to use only plain text, so the best advice I can give is this: Never click on links contained in e-mail messages that claim to be from your financial institution unless you very recently initiated a request to the institution that would have generated the message.
