Don’t Get Caught in the Phish Net
Phishing scams send emails that mimic reputable entities like banks, online resources and credit card companies to trick the receivers into sharing their financial and personal information or downloading malware. The targets may be directed to malicious web sites also posing as legitimate sites where they will be asked to enter login credentials and other personal information the attackers can use to commit identity theft.
The Purpose of Phishing Scams
- Phishing is associated with fraudulent activities and stealing personal information on web.
- The sensitive information including passwords, ID and details of credit cards are acquired by the process of phishing.
- This kind of ID theft takes place through electronic communication.
- Thus you should be very careful while using internet and accessing emails in your inbox. What you need is an effective and advance identity management provider.
- If you are currently looking for one now then Comodo can be an ideal choice.
How do Phishing Scams trap victims?
The ID hackers use phishing as a scam on Internet to get hold of your valuable information. You may come across pop up messages or suspicious emails from these fraudsters. In most of the cases this scam takes place through emails. These mails may ask you to update information about your personal accounts. Asking for confirmation of the confidential information, these spam mails will guide you to visit websites, which appear to belong to legitimate and authorized organization at a glance. But these websites are actually fake sites, which are operated by fraudsters to take over sensitive information from you. So be careful not to fall in the tricks set up by the ID thieves and prevent yourself from getting caught in the phish net.
Ways to Prevent Phishing yourself from Phish net:
- Be very careful about not replying to any such spam mails that ask you to confirm or update any information about your account.
- Do not follow any links that come with the spam mails, which will lead you to websites that ask for conformation of your account information.
- Never copy an unknown link from these kinds of spam mails and paste them on your web browsers. These links are made to look very humble by the phishers but they will actually land you to some scam and fraud sites.
- Be careful about opening or saving any document or attachment that come with spam mails. Do not trust these kinds of emails even if they appear to be sent by some authorized entity.
- Never ever send your confidential information about your account in an email.
- It is better to be protected from these scams by using firewall, anti-spyware and anti-virus software. Make sure to update this software regularly for security of your pc.
- Do not respond to those scam mails, which even seem to offer sound business or ask you to avail a refund. The fraudsters often send you phone numbers so that you call them up for business purpose. They use Voice over Internet Protocol technology. With this technology, their calls can never be traced.
You can help other Internet users by spreading the word about "phishing" scams.
- Do forward the spam mails to spam@uce.gov.
- Also send a copy of the mail to the bank or credit card company whose name is impersonated in the email.
- File a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission that you have fallen prey to the phish net. If you fall a victim to phishing then there are high chances that you will also be a victim of ID theft.
- You can also send email to the Anti-Phishing Working Group to reportphishing@antiphishing.org. This organization helps to fight further phishing scams.