Email Phishing - What Is It And How To Handle It
Phishing is a form of deception that is becoming ever more prevalent on the internet today. This type of deception is used by scammers (or phishers as they are sometimes referred to) as a way of stealing a person’s valuable personal information. The type of information that they are normally look to obtain, in order to use it for fraudulent purposes, will include a person’s bank account or credit card details, along with any passwords that they may have and also other person information such as their social security number. In this article we will be taking a closer look email phishing and what it is exactly.
Emails have become the main tool in a scammer’s arsenal when they are trying to obtain a person’s personal information in order to carry out some form of fraudulent act. Certainly when a person receives an email from a phisher, the receiver often finds that they can be very difficult to distinguish from one which they would have considered to have come from a legitimate source.
Often the logos and other information that they would expect to see on the legitimate site is very similar or is exactly the same as it has actually been taking directly from that site. But as well as using the logos etc., of a legitimate site, these scammers then will include a link within their email that will direct the person to what they consider to be a legitimate site also. In fact it can be difficult in some cases for a person who is not aware of what a phishing email or website is to distinguish them from the legitimate ones as the scammers will make them look as official as possible.
However if you wish to prevent yourself from becoming another victim of this growing problem on the internet then there are couple of things you should be looking for when you receive an unsolicited email from what is purportedly a legitimate site. Firstly if they ask you to “verify your account” then you should immediately ignore this altogether. No legitimate business will send an email to their clients requesting that they provide their passwords, login names or any other kind of personal information that relates to their online account. Secondly if you should receive any kind of email which states “if you do not respond within 48 hours then your account will be suspended or closed” ignore them. These types of email phishing scams are designed to get a person worried and so the phisher is hoping that the person will respond immediately to the email they have sent. In some cases to back this email up and to make it look even more authentic than it really is they will further say that “a response is required as your account may have already become compromised”. If you do become worried upon receiving such an email, do not use the link or telephone number provided in the email. Instead, look through your paperwork for the real phone number or url and use them instead. However by keeping in mind the kinds of ways in which email phishing scams are presented to you will help you in the future to prevent yourself becoming the next victim of identity theft.
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