Phishing scams are the fastest growing online scams today. Here are some tips to help you avoid them:
1. Do not respond to unsolicited emails that ask for any personal information regardless of how urgent the request appears. Legitimate companies do not ask for personal or sensitive information in this format. If you are concerned about your account – contact the company directly using an email address or phone number that you know is legitimate.
2. Do not email any personal or financial information. If you initiate a purchase online, look for indicators that the site is secure. E.g. a lock icon, a url that begins with “https:” (the “s” stands for secure)
3. Review your credit card and bank statements as you receive them to ensure that all transactions are legitimate.
4. Get spam and anti-virus protection such as our Email Defense product. Using the same methods to detect spam, phishing emails can be identified and filtered out of inbound email to stop you from receiving them. Our anti-spam rules, automatically protect you from anti-fraud and phishing scams before they enter your inbox.
5. Report anything suspicious. Contact the legitimate company in the suspect email using an email address or phone number that you know is correct.
Another little tip, if there is a link to a company and it appears valid (is the propery website domain name) and you wish to visit the site, you can either enter the url by hand into a browser or simply copy and paste the link into notepad and then back into a browser. This will eliminate the possibilty that the url contains hidden characters.
good one Rocky…and thanks for stopping by!
get firefox and download SpoofStick extension =)
very nice extension, i like that…thanks for stopping by – and the helpful extension!