4 Tips For Phishing Prevention
Today phishing attacks are used by scammers as they try to exploit a person’s inability at being unable to distinguish between what is a legitimate and what is a spoof website. Unfortunately at some stage while using the Internet a person is likely to receive a phishing email purporting to be from a legitimate source. But just what can a person use as part of their own phishing prevention routine?
In this article we provide some tips which should hopefully help to prevent a person from becoming the next victim of any kind of phishing attack.
Tip 1
It is important that you learn to recognize all types of phishing emails. You should make yourself aware that if you receive a message which needs you to take immediate action with regard to any of your personal accounts then avoid it like the plague. Most phishing emails will be addressed to either “Dear Valued Customer” or “Dear Sir/Madam”, while any legitimate emails from your bank or credit card company will be addressed to you by name. It is important to know that the phisher who has sent the email in the first place is after your personal information in order to use it for fraudulent purposes.
Tip 2
Never ever send any kind of sensitive personal information using an email. Emails are not the most secure form of communication available for people to use on the Internet. Certainly many scammers are quite capable of producing an email that looks legitimate and so will be easily able to forge such a document and then gain your information in this way. Tip 3
If you do have to transmit any personal information over the Internet then ensure that the site you are providing it to is completely secure. The best way for a person to identify if a site is secure or not is by looking at the site address. All sites which are considered to be secure should start with “https://” and not “http://”. Also if you look in the browser status bar you will see the lock icon being displayed. Tip 4
If you ever receive an email from someone you do not know and it contains a link within it then do not click on it. Rather what you should be doing is opening up an new browser page and then typing in the address which you know to be the authentic one. Or else you could call the person or company directly if you have had dealings with them and have spoken with them by telephone before. Above we have provided some tips in relation to phishing prevention which should hopefully help you in the future when you receive an email which you are unsure of where it has originated from. Also if possible as soon as you become aware of what you consider to be a phishing email it is important that you contact the legitimate source directly and inform them of the situation.
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