Don’t Fall Victim to a Phishing Attack
Often times we get an email addressed to us from a company we are familiar with, letting us know we need to bring up to date our data on their website. We should be raising the question if this is really the business you know about is the one asking for the update, and not a criminal?
Identity thieves designing websites to impersonate a company or credit company is a problem that is growing. The sole purpose for these sites is to fool you into revealing information that is personal. The combination of using websites and emails to trick you into revealing your personal information is called “phishing”. Phishing is a good reason to always be using a identity theft fraud protection service.
It is not as easy as you might think to catch a phishing email. They usually appear to be very real and will impersonate the emails you would receive from the real company. However, when you click on a link in a phishing email, you are taken to a website which only is there to steal your identity.
The fake, or phishing, websites are going to have the same design and feel of the real website. The best way to differentiate between the sham and genuine website is to take a close look at the website domain name. The fake one usually will have a portion of name in its name, but it will also have extra characters that revel it is a phishing site.
The organizations that create the phishing sites are usually experienced crooks. These criminals can afford to spend a bunch of cash and resources to come up with very real looking sites and emails since a bunch of money to be made in stealing identities. These thieves are out to steal from you, so it is always a great idea to be using a identity theft alert service.
Because they ultimately want to steal your identity, or other data that can be used to make a financial gain, they want to come across as real. They will have the same look and feel that the real business uses, which includes genuine slogans and logos.
Because these fake emails and sites can be so good, it is often times hard for people to tell that they are on a fake site. The more amount of work the criminals put into their duping sites and emails, the easier it is for them to trick unsuspecting victims.
If you do not want to become a victim of a phishing attack, you should make a habit of never click links found in emails. If you are convinced of the genuine nature of the email, then you should go to the website though normal means other than the email link. The best defense against these types of attacks is to never click on the email link in the first place, while making use of a identity theft protection plan service.
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Posted: February 16th, 2009 under Identity Theft.
Tags: phishing, phishing attack, phishing identity theft
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