If you haven’t had a familiar site ask you to update your personal information on their records, you are among the minority. The website is asking you to update your credit card info or your social security number or bank account numbers. You know who the business is but you don’t know why they have asked for an update. You are asked to go to a link to provide this information. Unfortunately, you find out that the site was a false site that was just mimicking a site you knew. You have suffered a “phishing” scam.
Phishing involves the act of sending an email to a person claiming to be an established business you know of. The phisher is trying to get you to give up your personal information so that it can be used for illicit purposes and to steal your identity. It is a very sneaky form of identity theft.
You cannot easily spot an email that is phishing for your info. It may look exactly like the site you are used to and contain the company logo. The “from” aspect of the email may be the exact right site URL. The clickable link may be on the website of the legitimate company but it is built in to send you to an illegitimate site that will grab your info and run with it.
These tend to be professional thieves that have spent a great deal of time creating emails that look like the real thing. You need to carefully take a look at any email that asks for this kind of thing. Remember that the “from” aspect of the email can easily look authentic. Logos can be faked easily. The phisher will spend a lot of time trying to make their site look authentic. There will almost always be a clickable link for you to directly go to the site to “update” your information conveniently. It is almost impossible to tell the email from the phishing site from an authentic site.
One way to see what’s going on is to point with your mouse onto the link. Then look on the bottom of your screen (in the left-hand corner) in order to see the real website the URL link is sending you. If it isn’t the website of your company, then it is a phishing site and you shouldn’t go there. This is a quick way to see if you are being phished for.
There is always an easy golden rule to follow. Never click on links that are within an email text and delete any email that asks for one immediately. Empty the trash in your email accounts in addition to deleting the email. This gets rid of the email address right away. You can always type in the URL shown in the email to be sure you’re in the right place. If it is a legitimate email, you won’t go wrong doing it this way and if it is a phishing site, they can’t get to you.
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