Protect Yourself From
Fraudulent eMail

How you can protect yourself from future attacks of fraudulent email?

What is "phishing"?

Phishing refers to the use of fraudulent electronic communications - email, instant messages, web pages - to trick an individual into disclosing sensitive information.

What does a phishing attempt look like?

The most common form of a phishing attack is an email message written to appear as a legitimate communication (a bank or credit card company, for example) requesting information from the recipient, such as their account number, password, or social security number.

How can you tell a legitimate email from a fake?

Phishing emails are marked as urgent, and claim that negative things will happen if the instructions are not followed immediately

• an account will be disabled,
• a mark on your credit score,
• the loss of funds, etc.

The messages frequently contain rather obvious misspellings, poor grammar, or strange characters as well.

What should you do if you receive a suspect email message?

1. Check with the vendor in question - the bank, credit card company, service provider, etc. - in person, via a known customer service phone number.
2. If a phone number to call is included with the email, always call the bank or service provider's known phone number and verify. The phone number in the email may be fake as well.

How do you know the emails you receive are real?

There are ways that you can tell if an email is real;

1. The sender will have a legitimate return email address in the "From:" line,
2. Or the message will usually be sent to specific distribution lists.

What do you do if you receive a suspicious email?

If you think that an email you've received is fake, add its patterns to our email filters.

Copyright © People News

Source: Information Management, August 2006