Nowadays, the likelihood is subjected to phishing keeps increasing with the expansion of internet usage for everyday life activities, such as shopping and online banking. Anyone who regularly uses emails can be targeted by phishing scammers as one of the most common phishing activity is to emulate your bank account emails in order to obtain your data. However, this is not the only possibility. Keep reading our blog post in order to discover more about phishing and learn how to avoid being scammed.
What is phishing
The term phishing refers to the attempt of obtaining sensitive data, like passwords and credit card information, by pretending to be a trusty entity, like your internet service provider or your bank.
Generally, the phishing alert you will receive will state an issue with your account and will ask you to confirm your login and password information. This type of scam is quite smart, in the sense that you will be redirected to the official institution after entering your information, therefore you won’t realise the scamming instantly.
Ways to protect yourself from phishing
As phishing is considered quite persuasive and effective, it can be hard to detect even for the most cautious internet users. Over time, phishing scammers are finding ways to improve their methods and sending very convincing messages which can very easily trick people.
In order to protect yourself, please be very careful before handing over sensitive information. Moreover, never click the link you get in the email from your bank or any other major institution. Instead, log into your email from the browser and type the web address manually in order to see if it is the official website.
Furthermore, keep an eye out for typos and unprofessional-looking interfaces; those are usually indicators of fake messages. You can also compare previous emails you have received from the entity; if they look significantly different, you should start being suspicious.
Finally, the strongest defence against phishing is certainly an internet security software. The latter will provide anti-scamming and anti-malware actions in your devices, giving them several layers of protection. Specifically, the anti-scam is designed to protect you from scams and phishing emails.