Written by What is phishing? Phishing is an attempt to steal information like passwords, bank account numbers, and other personal information by pretending to be something you are familiar with and trust. Some people never think twice about providing this information when asked. I am going to give some examples of phishing attempts, show you what to look for and what to avoid. Then I will go over some methods and tools that companies use to help you dodge this type of scam.
Most common phishing attempts come directly to your email inbox. They appear to be from your bank, credit card company, email provider, social network site, or many other organizations that you may have an affiliation with. Below is a short list of common types of phishing scams you may encounter.
- An email that appears to be coming from your bank, telling you that their has been fraudulent activity on your account, then asks you to click a link to verify your personal account information.
- An email that appears to come from your email provider or social network telling you that your account has been locked for security purposes, then wants you to verify by clicking a link and filling out a form.
- A mistyped web address taking you to a page that looks like the site you are trying to access and they are just waiting for you to log in.
The list goes on, but they are all similar in the respect that they are trying to trick you into handing them your information.
Okay, now you are most likely wondering, what do I do? How do I identify these scams? Great news, most of these scams are pretty easy to avoid, it just requires a little attention to detail.
First, you should really get familiar with your company or website’s policies regarding asking for personal information. Most reputable companies will never ask you for this by email. If you do receive an email like this, hover over the link without clicking it. Most web browsers and email programs will let you see where the link is actually going to take you before you click. While hovering over the link with the mouse pointer, look down on the bottom left of your browser or email client and see where is says it will take you. Look at this very close, if it is not the website you should be going to, don’t click it. Report this as spam or delete it.
Avoiding scams from mistyped web addresses or urls is easy, just verify it is correct, down to the letter, before entering any information.
Online email providers such as Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, and others will help you out with this problem. They have very good anti-phishing capabilities built right in to their system. When their system finds an email that does not appear to be coming from who it says it is coming, their system automatically sends it to the spam folder. Most web browsers now have phishing filters built into them, so do a lot of reputable toolbars. I recommend turning these on, they will definitely help. I admit, I am not a be fan of most toolbars, but if you have them, check to see if they have an anti-phishing filter built in and if so, turn it on.
Check back for shortly for my next topic about toolbars, which ones are safe, and which oens to avoid.
Browse Safely!
Jason Seabolt
Froggy IT Solutions
Recent Comments