2 Responses June 25

Phishing or Fraudulent Messages

In our day today, we use email for various purposes like while registering, subscription, billing confirmations, and shopping areas. since it is widely used over the Internet it is easy to get your mail-id. Hackers take advantage of this and send you phishing emails or fraudulent emails. These emails contain malicious links and offers or information saying that you won a lottery and they will ask you to register or provide your information or use the link to login using your Amazon, email, or Facebook accounts. we receive these mails a lot.

I received a mail with the subject saying “ ! "

I opened the mail and checked where I received this mail from. I received this mail " Keto Trail Shark Tank" with mail id " [email protected]".

They posted a link asking me to register and use the trail. I know this is from public domain and not legitimate mail since the email address does not pull any information if you try searching for it (Luke, 2020).It also holds information saying this offer is exclusively for two days and tried to make me fall for it. Not only limited to this I checked on the Content of this mail and information provided does not make any sense. Please do not open such links which are not secured.

Always prefer HTTPS links over HTTP.

I realized it was a phishing scam right away. Hence, I did not open the link nor checked the contents of the mail with the original password.

Above was the one scenario of a Phishing mail. There are so many occasions when we receive fraudulent messages like you have won Lottery and they want your personal information in order to complete the process and they even ask your social security number or your address, contact details. We should always report against these types of emails (Rob, 2019).

These are the few things we should always take into consideration if we get such emails or accidentally visit phishing websites.

1. Never Share any Personal information.

2. Never open any kind of attachments as they may contain some viruses or spyware.

3. Be cautious with pop up and don't enter any personal or financial information in it as some pop up may seem legit but they are either adware or can lead to download some viruses.

4. As the technology advances Scammers are coming up with new ways to scam either it be some corrupted image or a document sometimes attachments can contain some malware which can cause problems with your device.

As we all are responsible for our own privacy and security. So always be careful when while surfing on the Internet.

                                                                             References

Luke, I. (2020, June 10). 5 Ways to detect Phishing email – with examples. Retrieved from

https://www.itgovernance.co.uk/blog/5-ways-to-detect-a-phishing-email

Rob, W. (2019, September 4). What should you do if you receive a phishing mail? Retrieved from

https://www.howtogeek.com/437513/what-should-you-do-if-you-receive-a-phishing-email/