I’m sure most of you have received fraudulent emails like this. Here’s a tip for you for identifying fraudulent emails.
If you get a message like this, HOVER the mouse over the link in the e-mail. DO NOT CLICK. You will see where the link will send you if you click. In this case, it would send me to a .co.za domain, which is in South Africa. Don’t click, just delete the message.
The last part of the address is the “top level domain” or TLD. In the US, it should be .com for commercial sites, .org for non-profit sites, .net for networking sites, and a few others. Foreign countries have TLD’s like .ca for China, .de for Germany, etc. You can see a list of TLD’s here: http://www.iana.org/domains/root/db
After identifying fraudulent emails
Of course, the standard advice still applies… Don’t open suspicious e-mails! If you did have an American Express account and you got a fraud alert, you should NOT click the link in the e-mail, but call them. You could also open your browser and log into your account again not using the link in the e-mail.