Tips to Avoid Becoming a Victim of Phishing

Phishing is a favorite method for hackers to steal personal data.  Unfortunately, Internet users still fall victim to phishing scams over and over.

Phishing involves trying to trick users into either clicking a link in email and providing data in a form on a fake website, or clicking an attachment that installs malicious content on the computer or device.  The ZeuS (Zbot) scam is a prime example of this.

Here are a few tips to avoid phishing scams:

• Keep all browsers used up to date. Remember that updating one browser, doesn’t update them all as they are all independent from one another.

• Don’t open email messages from unfamiliar senders, open attachments in suspicious messages, or click links that look strange, even if the sender is someone known.

• Avoid opening messages that have a subject that appears as if it’s urgent or can’t wait.  If it’s that important, a phone call is typically the communication method.

• Do not send credit card, social security, or other personally identifiable information via email.  Email is not usually encrypted, so anything that is sent that way is via plain text and vulnerable.

• Do not click links or open attachments that claim to be from a financial institution but asks for private information to be filled out or credentials to be “verified.”  Financial institutions will not request that type of information in that manner.

• If a suspicious message is received and there is contact information, it’s better to go to the site of the organization directly or from a pre-bookmarked link to get the phone number and email addresses.  Phishers will create authentic looking fake sites to try to get information from users.  The contact information on the phony sites goes back to the phishers.

• Keep anti-malware and anti-virus programs updated.

• Apply critical and security patches to your system as soon as they are available. This applies to mobile devices as well.