When you get an email from your bank or other institution telling you you owe $x, IT'S A SCAM.

I spent time with a really intelligent and educated person who received such an email and couldn't convince him that it was a scam.  It was from a bank (allegedly) he does some business with telling him that he owed them X dollars. It had a link he was supposed to click on to pay or get more information.

He felt he should check even though he couldn't understand why he'd owe them.  Banks send paper letters when you owe them as do companies.

I seldom do any computer/software work for anybody anymore but when I did an enormous amount was from people who clicked on links in emails & who installed software to speed up their computer.  Convincing people no matter their age to not click on links or even open emails from their banks or credit card companies is next to impossible.

I believe the majority of hacking and virus problems would disappear if people would do 2 simple things, not click on links in emails and answer personal questions, second make a password that was completely unconnected to anything about them. (and put that password in a txt or rtf file with other information so it wasn't easily identified.