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After the email some of us received this week, we're all on high alert for scams in our email. But what does "phishing" mean? And how can you protect yourself? See below!
Phishing: a way of attempting to
acquire information by pretending to be a trustworthy company/website (making a fake site that mimics the real one)
Whaling: a phishing attack specifically targeting a senior executive or other high profile
targets within a business (this is what we experienced here at GovDelivery this week)
The fraudster is
trying to trick you into believing that the message they sent is from a
legitimate source. They create an email or website using:
- Names
of real companies.
- Names
of an actual employee in the “From” line or in the text of the message.
- Subject
line that uses fear to trigger a response, like “Urgent Message” or “Security
Breach - Change Your Password.”
- Very
specific information
- Links
that contain URLs that look like they belong to a legitimate organization, but
in reality are copy-cat websites.
Ask!
Call the company that supposedly sent you the email or link.
Do some research yourself.
Call your friendly GovDelivery Technology Information guy, Daniel May.
For more information, visit the GovDelivery blog. |
