Phishing is on the rise. Mainly because of the many honest people that have fallen victim to phishing attacks. In this article we are going to present to you the very basics of phishing, how it works, and ways to fight back.
Phishing is the simple process of a person exteriorly calling you, claiming to be someone from the inside that needs to ues some personal information from you, to help them verify that they are speaking to the correct person. This person will want to identify themselves, and wouldn’t want to let you down if they really were an authorized employee. In support of that statement, they will insist that they are not after your information, they only want to verify that you exist. Whatever impetus was behind the phishing attack, (idea or reason), is why it is called phishing.
Phishing is placing a sign on your bar, as they call it, that lets everyone know they are going to call you. This is setting yourself up for a potential attack. If you don’t know how to verify someone’s identity, then you are setting yourself up for frustration and additional fees. Both situations are bad for business. Since these attacks are occurring in support of identity thefts, you are going to have to protect your own identity and your customers’ as well.
How can you determine whether or not someone’s email is safe to communicate with? There are ways to determine whether or not an email is safe or unsafe to send information through. According to The New York Post, the phone number to a phishing service often comes up with an disconnected phone number, scammers don’t want to connect to a phone number, so they rely on an email address that they can send information to and avoid detection.
If you get an email that you think may be a phishing attempt, you should not click on the link. Even if it appears that the email address that you see in the email is a legitimate one. For all you know, that person may be an impostor, and they are really trying to steal your information.
If you are going to reply to an email, and ask them to remove any harmful words or information that you may have seen, you may not want to use your personal email address. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dealt with customers that call me and are like, ” ALEXAJ Official,” and then in the body of the email they’re like, “To: Alexander Johnson Subject: Payment Due diligence request.” The first time that I looked at the suspect email, no matter how many times I asked them to remove the content, they kept putting it back on the server.
Instead, you should forward the message to the people that you think are in charge of making sure that your account is okay. Many times, these people will get it today or tomorrow, but you’d rather make sure than face the possibility of losing money under a chargeback mentality.
Stood ready to be removed once we determined that this was a phishing attempt. The website is no longer safe to enter. We tried to contact the persons in charge of the account to make sure they were no longer authorized to access the information. They were phished and are unwilling to take it down. Unfortunately, even if it were legal, once it was pointed out on a forum that this is a phishing attempt, the authorities got involved.
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