What is PHISHING?

It’s the illegal activity where very unscrupulous people attempt to  steal your login and credit card details.

That’s the simple explanation. How they do it is very devious and almost clever, which is why it’s something you need to be very wary of.

No Financial Institution or Membership site will ever ask for your details.

Now you may have come across emails pretending to be from some bank asking you to click on a link to be taken to a website to fill in your details on the pretense that something bad will happen if you don’t. If you are ever in doubt ( and I highly suggest that you are ) call the bank or whoever it’s pretending to be from.

I’ve seen emails from my own bank, from Paypal and even from Facebook, telling me somethings wrong and it needs my immediate attention. Just go to this site and log in…. Umm, yeah right!

Rule 1.

Never, ever give your login details, credit cards details from a site you’ve been sent to from an email.

Always check the website address that appears in the link if you are tempted, it’s the dead giveaway.

I’m going to go into a lot more detail later on about this because it does catch people out and it’s not because they are stupid. It’s because they are trusting and the “aholes” that do this make it look as legitimate as they possible can. I can easily understand how people try to do the right thing when asked. It’s just they are being asked by the wrong people.

Rule 2.

It pays to pay attention. I’ll be showing some actual images later on to explain what goes on. But sometimes you can glance at the website link and it’ll have the words or the institution in it making it look legit. If you look a bit harder you’ll see there are a few extra little bits attached that is actually a different website to the one you think it is.

Rule 3.

If you are unsure, ring the bank or whoever it is from.

If you have an issue with a bank for instance, they are more likely to ring you or send you a letter. Even then, be wary. Its still a good idea to call them back on a number you know is there’s. I love it when I get called up and I have to prove to them who I am…. What proves they are who they say they are… Gee am I getting paranoid? Well, unfortunately, there are those out there that simply love to take money from who ever they can. So I’d rather call it being cautious.

Like I mentioned, there is a bunch more I want to write about this. It’s not a good feeling to get conned. I fell for it once by ending up at some website where I actually purchased something and gave my credit card details. When the alarm bells finally started ringing, I looked into the site a little more and found the other things missing that screamed it was a scam. So I had to quickly cancel my card…

That’s another topic on making online purchases…

Just always keep this question in mind.

Why are they asking? It should keep you a little more vigilant. But they do know how to get you to panic… with subjects like “Your Funds have been frozen….” and other subjects designed to put the wind up you and make you take action.

There are ones like…. We’ve not been able to deliver your parcel… Someone wants to send you money… and I could go on and on…

So keep those eyes open, don’t be quick to fill in anything and if you are unsure, make a phone call to whoever it is… Which isn’t dumb as you’ll be alerting them to someone sending out these emails.

You could write a book on this…

So I’ll come up with some more, but my real intention was to make you aware of this. If you’re pretty new to the Internet, you are more likely to fall for this. Again , its not from being unintelligent. These are clever people and they know what works and if you have your guard down, then you might just fall victim to it.

So please, take care out there. While the Internet is in general, a great place where we can do lots of amazing things and meet  lots of amazing people and share this and that… there are those few “bottom dwelling blood sucking…<add your own words here>” persons whose only intention is to rob your blind.

On the "off chance" that you actually liked this post,
how about liking us on Facebook?...

Powered By Facebook Like Post Plugin