To secure your sensitive data, identity and personal funds while surfing the World Wide Web, you need to familiarize yourself with one of the most popular methods hackers will use to steal your sensitive information -Phishing via Email!!
First of all, you need to learn all about email phishing and how you can identify and prevent it.
Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire personal information by using a particular message, e-mail or phone call to make you believe they belong to the organization or bank whose information they want to acquire.
We will be discussing here how Phishing is done via email, as this is the easiest and also the most effective way for the hackers to gain access to your personal information.
Ok, so let’s go ahead and educate ourselves so that you can feel a tad safer doing what you do on the internet.
Email hosting provider:
Email access is on two levels, one is corporate ground and another is public or free domain.
Genuine corporate emails come via abc@XYZ.com where “abc” denotes name or position of the person and “xyz” denotes the organisation.
Public Email services are free of charge from big Web leaders, such as Google’s “Gmail” and likewise Yahoo’s “Yahoo Mail” service. Most of the criminals use this free email service as they, of course, cannot have corporate emails.
Next time you get an email claiming to be from, or part of, a particular organisation, but is from a public email service, be on alert. Enquire with the respective organisation for further details before you even reply.
Most of the professional companies or organisations usually have copy editors or writing staff to avoid spelling or grammar mistakes and upon close inspection if you see errors with grammar and punctuation, you should question the sender’s authenticity.
Beware of unnecessary links in email:
Now, you get an email that relates close enough to the organisation name; spelling and grammar is flawless too but you find some suspicious links within the email and the sender encourages you to click those links.
Now before you click on it, just rest your cursor on that link and check for address that shows up and whether both addresses are the same or not.
As you see in the above link bracket the actual link is different to the display URL, as the redirection address [Comes in yellow box] is different. Beware of such links!!
Baseless Threats:
Have you ever got an email threat saying that your bank account will be closed or your card will be deactivated from such a date, or that your account is being put in sleep mode, if you don’t respond to the said email message?
These are Baseless threats; cyber-criminals use such kind of threats to make you panic and enable them to access your sensitive information associated with that organisation/bank.
If you receive any such emails; avoid responding to them and call the organisation that the phishing email has supposedly been sent from. Most of the online organisations have their own phishing cell to track such cases.
Finally, you need to use your “common sense” and keep your eyes open and remember that not everything has to be done online. In case you have doubts about the authenticity of an email account always call up the customer care of the bank, or whatever company it is, and ask for help regarding the process and you will be guided in a safer way.
