How to Recognize and Protect Yourself from Phishing Scams

How to Recognize and Protect Yourself from Phishing Scams

Posted by Dallas IT Solutions at 5:30 pm

by Brian Lamacraft

Using the Internet can be a dangerous place if you are not careful. The use of email programs can be a way for criminals and hackers to get into your personal data by the means of what we call phishing. This term means to “fish” or in other words the criminal sends you a piece of information that seems legitimate and tries to entice you into filling in a form or going to a website to complete a form and then using this to steal your data, money or even your entire identity.

Phishing by email is very common and you may receive such things as “your account is being deleted,” “please update,” “we have received an error,” and so on. This is used to scare you into thinking something is very wrong with one of your online accounts and force you into quickly entering in the requested data. Often the email seems legitimate and looks like it could have come from a trusted site. But, this is not the case because a company will never ask you for information via email and make you sign a form. This is always done from the website and not from an email form. You should never fill out a form via email under any circumstances from any website. Sometimes when you sign up from a site they will get you to verify your account by email. Since you have joined, this is safe. If you are not sure, don’t join any sites that seem to be questionable to you.

Other common phishing attempts are ones that claim you have won money or prizes and ask for sensitive financial data to get your reward. Never fall for these trick. If an email is suspect, just delete it right away. If you receive phishing attempts from sites you have already joined, notify the site about he hacking attempt so they can work to eliminate the threats. Sites that care about your business will work with you to lessen the chances of you getting phishing emails.

A good idea is to create another email account and use that one for online activity so it collects all the junk, while using your main email for business and personal contacts. Many email providers work hard to remove suspected phishing emails but some always slip through undetected. Make sure you only bookmark websites that you trust and don’t do business with any that you think are suspect.

Conclusion

Phishing is a part of using the Internet, but you can avoid this scam with some basic common sense. Never open email you think is even remotely suspect and report any phishing attempts from sites you join to the webmasters of that site so they can work to eliminate the threats. Create a separate email account if you do a lot of emailing online so potential threats only go to one account and keep your main account relatively phishing free.

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