There has been plenty of coverage in the media over the past week or so about online security and scams.

The techniques, strategies and technologies being used by these scammers are becoming more sophisticated making it increasingly difficult to detect the real deal from the scam.

I just thought I'd list a couple of email scams that I or my friends have come across in recent times in the hope that they can help you identify potential problems before it is too late.

Common Email Scams

In the past these were fairly easy to detect - the obvious ones were the email from someone in Nigeria telling you that you had inherited a bucket load of money and just needed to confirm some details and the money would be all yours.

However over the past few months a new form of email scam has become common and it leverages off of some recognised brands like UPS and Facebook.

The two that I've heard of are related to these particular organisations, but the scam is the same so it would apply equally to emails from any official sounding person from a recognised company.

The one from UPS states that they were unable to deliver a parcel to your house as you were away, and attached is a zip file that contains your tracking number so that you can pick the item up.

The second is an email from facebook saying for security reasons they had to reset your password and they have sent you a new one...in a zip file.

Sensing a theme here?

Be very wary of any email from a brand name business that has an attached zip file. This zip file could contain anything, but it is common for it to contain a program that attaches itself to your computer and becomes very hard to get rid of.

The cunning thing about this particular program is that it is actually a fake security program and continually alerts you to security problems on your computer. To 'fix' these problems you need to buy the 'full version' of their software.

The pop-ups are regular and annoying and the sales page for the software looks very convincing so I could imagine people paying the thirty or forty dollars to get rid of their security problems.

Of course then they have your credit card details and its game over.

So don't open any zip files unless you know who the file is from. especially avoid those from brand name businesses - there's no way they would send you this type of file so delete them straight away.

If you read this and you've come across any similar scams feel free to list them below.