Ecommerce is big business. Hundreds of billions of electronic transactions occur globally each year and this figure is set to continue to rise. Unfortunately as this business has grown it has become prey to some nefarious operators who are keen to get their hands on a slice of the money by any means necessary. Hackers have managed to come up with many devious ways of intercepting sensitive information through the use of malware like viruses and Trojan horses. One method which has been responsible for theft of vast sums of money is known as ‘phishing’. Continue reading to learn how to avoid falling for a phishing scam.
What are phishing scams?
The word phishing refers to a term where email lures are used to ‘phish’ sensitive data like bank logins and passwords from unsuspecting victims. The use of ‘ph’ instead of an ‘f’ in the word comes from early hackers that were known as ‘phreaks‘.
Read also: What to Do When You’ve Been Hacked (Vital 10 Things to Do)
Phishing scams have been around since the mid 1990’s and since their initiation they have grown and developed in order to evade detection. The original method of deceiving users into replying to e-mail requests for passwords and credit card details has now evolved to include fake web pages, installation of Trojan key-loggers, man-in-the-middle data proxies and screen captures.
All of these methods are delivered through electronic communication channels and target sensitive information belonging to the victim.
As a result of the high success rate of phishing scams these systems now even include fake job sites or job offers. Applicants are attracted with the promise of high earnings for a small investment of time. In order to participate all they are required to do is to create a new bank account, then take the funds that have been transferred into it, less their personal commission, and transfer it forward as an international money order. This is money laundering and although the victim here might not lose their own personal funds it is possible to suffer prosecution and even imprisonment as a result of this ruse.
Read also: How Does Phishing Affect Your Business?
How to spot suspicious signs and avoid falling for a phishing scam
Luckily, although hackers are technically gifted, they are also prone to making mistakes and there are plenty of tell-tale signs that will let you know that the email you have received, or the webpage you are on, is part of a phishing scam. If you have an email from a company that you have not dealt with before, it is probably part of a scam.
Read also: The Top 10 Dangerous Emails You Should Never Click On
Phishing emails often have small spelling and grammar mistakes which you will not find if the source is legitimate. Pay close attention to the senders address and if you are unsure compare it with other emails that you have had from that bank or business. If the message requires an immediate response or contains a threat of legal action it may also be part of a con. You should also pay close attention to the security certificates and web address for any site that you are on. Secure web addresses will start with https and display a padlock symbol to show that they are safe.
Read also: How to Detect Malicious Websites
How to make sure you don’t become the victim of a phishing scam
To protect yourself from any sort of email threats especially phishing, it is crucial to stay vigilant and be cautious while performing transactions on the internet.
Take care with any emails that you receive and check them carefully before you proceed.
Do not click on links in messages and use the address bar on your internet browser to locate websites to check their level of security.
Use a disposable or temporary email address for short-term online registrations.
As a general rule of thumb, if you don’t think it looks right, do not enter your information.
Read also: How to Stay Safe Online
Awesome information! Well yes, any suspicious emails should avoided, any unknown links should not be clicked/open and one should be careful while making online transactions. As it is said “Prevention is better than Cure.” Thanks for sharing 🙂
“Prevention is better than cure”, well said Nizam!
Agree, never click links included in your emails specially if you don’t know the person. Very informative Peter. Keep it going!
Nhick
Even if the email is from a known person, I still keep reminding myself to be cautious. Always think twice before clicking any hyperlinks in emails!
Phishing emails have special signs that email firewall might noticed before dropping it your inbox folder. Moreover, a bit of skills required for you to differentiate the mails sent by bank or business and mails sent by intercepto or hackers.
Good information so far indeed and really enjoyed the reading.
One important fact is that: Banks or businesses will NEVER send emails asking you to verify your usernames and passwords. Anyone received such emails should just delete/ignore them!
The best way to stay safe is to never click on any links in e-mails from unknown sources. Not only can you get your financial details compromised, you can also get a virus or Spyware infecting your computer system. Good information Peter and it’s always nice to get a reminder about online security now and then.
If you suspect the email is not authentic, just give a phone call to the company to make sure. Thanks for commenting, Jan.
I really hate phishing scam, they do suck.
They sure are!
Well in my day there was no phishing there was only fishing. I get so tired of those things. Some of them are done very well and look almost exactly like the site they are trying to get your details for. They have logos, and sometimes sneaky links that resemble the real deal. The thing I have been getting a lot of lately are inheritances and lottery stuff. I swear I must have won a billion dollars last year according to all these things I get in my email.
Yeah I’m getting a few of those(inheritance spam emails) too lately. Fortunately my email filtering technology is good enough to screen out these emails from the legitimate ones.
i agree with u, just delete or ignore email from anyone we don’t know, nice post by the way.
My thoughts exactly! Thanks!
Hi Peter,
Phishing scams are certainly scary, especially when you are caught unaware. A good friend of mine suggested something included in your post, and that is to never click a link on my email coming from financial institutions I have an account with.
And your friend was absolutely right about that 🙂
I found it helpful to search the content of the suspected email online. More often than not, the result would show you plenty of instances where other people also received the same email thus confirming that that email is indeed part of a phishing scam.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Elmer!
This is definitely something everyone should know about I’m still hearing a lot of people being reeled into scams like this and just because they weren’t aware.
It’s sad to know that some people would actually bait others with good stuff only to be caught off guard. Thanks for making us aware about it!
You are welcome!
Phishing scams have been on a high these days. The town is buzzing loud with such scams which sucks the vital and crucial information. This is such a brilliant post, which delves into the niche of such Phishing scams and spread the word of caution all round. Thanks for the share.
Yeah, there are people who will create fake websites to try and trick you into giving out your vital information. We just have to be extra alert on this!
You’ve just helped a lot of people with the awesome information that you’ve just shared. I’ve always been a bit paranoid of those kind of emails, but now, thanks to you, i know now what to look for in order to avoid this type of nasty scam.
Glad the article helps!
Thanks for spreading the awareness. With so much going on in the internet world, newer ways of phishing scam have come up and we need to be most vigilant.
That’s right, Fatima!
Facilitative share Peter.
I am always quiet paranoid about such emails and this share of yours have helped me learn effective ways to deal with them . Keeping antivirus up to date and not clicking on hyperlinks in e-mails are nice preventive measures.
A simple point : “Always check the address bar of your browser before you log into any website”. A little carefulness can save a lot.
i always get mail from MICROSOFT or Bill Gates (LOL) which tells me to enter my details and what i do is mark them as spam. this is a serious problem. we should always check the URL before using it
Hello Peter
U don’t believe in it ,that I was started getting around 100-200 emails every day in one of my gmail Id.I wondered all are them from almost new author or business party.But the point is how they get my email address and from where?I was thinking, most of them are for marketing purpose but who knows which mail from few hundreds a day play its game.Finally I close my that Id and make a new account.This only for to get rid from these junked mails.
You’re definitely not alone in getting those emails. They got our email addresses from all kind of sources possible. Unless you don’t use any email services, otherwise these junk emails are hard to avoid!
Just because of this many internet users fears to buy products online as well as to do any transaction online , but now banks are using tight security measure to avaoid fraud.
Good information. A little common will indeed help. Most times I’ve always obesrved that the sender email can reveal everything. If you are only careful to take a look at headers and sender email of every email you receive, you will avoid scams.
Thanks for sharing.
Yeah I agree. Most scams can be avoided if we could pay close attention to certain things and use some common sense. Thanks for stopping by, Chadrack!
Great information is provided in the post which is helpful in our online life. In my opinion all above points are worthy means we are taking prevention steps but one key point is to install a well reputed Full Internet security suite which gives you full protection online also you can use OpenDNS which prevents fake and infected sites from loading.
We must always bear in mind that: If it sounds too good to be true, it’s most likely a scam and should be ignored! Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Rahul!
Generally phishing scams happen due to provide secure information like login details to unauthorized sites. So please try to understand the phishing scam and make your online transactions with registered or authorized sites.