How do you avoid phishing?

Answer 1

Phishing has a few clues that you can notice that will help you avoid them:the email has a impersonal greeting that doesn't refer to you by name and the "from" address doesn't match where the email claims to have come from. Usually a company email will have the company's name in its email address. Phishing emails are often asking for information the company should already know, like passwords and other sensitive information. Phishing emails also have are likely to seem "too good to be true" with their offers such as free money or rewards you didn't apply to receive or to win.

Answer 2

Phishing is a technique used to acquire information such as passwords, user names, and banking and credit card details. This is done by pretending to be a trustworthy or known entity in some form of electronic communication such as email or social media interactions.

Answer 3

Hi!

There are several ways to avoid a phishing scam.

Most often, email scams pretend to come from reputable sources, particularly banks. They ask for credit-card numbers, pin-numbers, and other personal details, normally giving a reason for this request of your information.

Often this is where you can spot the scammers - they'll over-emphasise and sensationalise the importance of you giving the information to them, e.g. "...if you don't send us your card number VERY SOON all your money will be STOLEN!!" etc.

Clearly, this method is employed to whip a person into panic, meaning they might make the irrational decision to hand the details over!

In addition, no bank or professional organisation will ask for such personal details via email.

Some phishing scams have become slightly better at pulling the wool over our eyes however. Some ask readers to follow a link to input their data. Such links direct users to an often very professional and legitimate looking website. Javascript and other languages can even be used to put the correct URL into the URL bar, and so on, adding to the realism and security people feel as they enter their information. Clearly, however, the data the user gives to the site will not really go to the people they believe it will. Instead, it well end up the hands of the fraudsters.

To avoid this nasty scam, make sure, instead of clicking the link, you type in the bank (or other organisations) URL into the address bar yourself.

Ultimately, avoiding a phishing scam is all about common sense. As mentioned before, banks and other organisations should never be asking for your personal details over email. If a request for your data is written in the email in an odd way (poor grammar, incorrect spelling and other such unprofessional features are a dead give-away), or email address it is from looks odd, (i.e. instead of, say, j.smith@bank.com, the sender was 0jaja93@hotmail.com) then it is reasonably likely to be a phishing scam.

If you still feel concerned, simply give the organisation involved a phone call, to check that everything is above-board. In doing so, the organisation can, if it turns out to all be a scam, make investigations and even get the police involved to hopefully shut-down the fraudsters!

I hope this helps you!

Answer 4

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