What Is Phishing?
What is a phishing email and how can you protect yourself against one?
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What Is Phishing?
Have you ever received an email that didn’t look quite right? Have you ever been emailed from a friend who was seemingly stuck abroad and needed a few hundred dollars wired to them? Has a Nigerian princess ever solicited your help?
Every day there are billions and billions of spam emails sent to everyone on the Internet. In fact, half of all email sent is spam. Now, some of these emails are a tad more devious. They aren’t meant to just solicit you to buy something or to look at a website you might be interested in. Emails known as phishing emails serve a more dubious purpose: to trick you to steal information, or even your money.
Phishing emails are typically designed to look like legitimate emails. They could look like they are coming from a bank, friend, or social media website. The goal is often to collect information about you or to steal information such as your bank account or passwords. In this post, I’ll show you how to keep you information and computer safe and avoid phishing emails!
The Goal of Phishing Emails
You may be thinking “OK, Tech Talker, I receive a lot of junk and phishing emails, but I’d never fall for them.” Sadly, the reason so many people receive junk mail and phishing emails is because they cost next to nothing to send and even one person who falls for them means that they were worth the effort.
While spam email typically solicits you to buy something, phishing emails are much more serious. They are designed to look like legitimate emails from legitimate businesses and websites. Some spear phishing emails will come in the form of banking emails that require immediate attention to your account. These emails will often direct you to a fake website that looks like your real bank. The goal is to get you login to the fake website, which will actually steal your banking passwords.
The same goes for other websites such as social media and email accounts. These emails will pose as emails from a real website, and the goal is to get your login username and password. From there, they will start sending other phishing emails to your friends and contacts in order to spread their campaign.
The Dangers of Phishing
Now it goes without saying that it’s negative if someone gets your banking information. A hacker getting the contact list of your friends and family through email and social media is also bad because they can then send email as you, which your contacts will trust more. This will only spread the phishing emails, and put your friends and family at risk.
Sometimes phishing emails will even be a bit more devious and will simply want you to click on a link. Simply clicking on a link in an email can lead to being infected with a virus. Browsers and modern operating systems are good at spotting viruses. However, they are not perfect, and visiting a website could mean a malicious program gets loaded on to your computer and causes you to become infected.
Always be sure to be skeptical about every email you receive.
What Is Spear Phishing?
Sometimes phishing emails can be directly targeted at an individual. This is called spear phishing. Think of phishing like casting a net and catching a bunch of fish. Spear phishing is picking out a specific fish and catching it. Spear phishing emails contain much more information about you and may even come from someone you know. This type of email is common from hackers trying to get your specific information, or to use you to get access private information about your company or any other specific interests that might be of use to them. These are often the hardest to spot.
How to Spot Phishing Emails
So now you know what phishing is. Let’s talk about how to spot it. First, always be sure to be skeptical about every email you receive. Is it from a website that you’re familiar with? Is it a friend emailing you at 2 a.m. that you know is in bed every night at 9 p.m.? Are there some misspellings?
If you receive an email from any website, just know that they will never need your password or other information. If the email seems legit, call the company, or create a new email to the company to double check. If you spot a fake email, you should definitely email the real company so that they are aware of the new scam.
Next you should always check links in your email. If you’re on a laptop or desktop computer, you can check links by putting your mouse over them. This will show where the link actually goes. For example, if it says check out Facebook.com, and when you put your mouse over it, it instead says, Randomwebsite.com, you know that the email isn’t real! This is a great website to learn more about spear phishing.
How to Prevent Phishing Emails
Now if you already receive a ton of junk email, you should be sure not to put your email on anything public—not Facebook, not forums, pretty much nothing that any public person can see. This is because scammers, hackers, and marketers have special programs that just scan websites for email addresses they can try and scam.
If you have any stories about phishing, feel free to tell me about it on the Tech Talker Facebook page.
Be sure to check out all my earlier episodes at techtalker.quickanddirtytips.com. And if you have further questions about this podcast or want to make a suggestion for a future episode, post them on Facebook QDTtechtalker.
Until next time, I’m the Tech Talker, keeping technology simple!
