How to Identify the Common Phishing Scams?
A phishing scam is a form of cybercrime, where hackers or cybercriminals target individuals, businesses, and financial institutes. They try to deceive people into revealing their sensitive information like their bank details, credit or debit card details, their personal passwords, and ids. It is a form of attack that uses social engineering tactics to force the person to take those actions that could harm them in long run. There are various ways in which they target to reveal confidential user information. It could be in form of emails, voice notes, messages, or many other ways. In this article, we try to reveal some ways to identify common phishing scams but before that let’s have a brief look at the various means of phishing attacks
1) Email phishing
It is one of the most known forms of phishing attacks. Hackers impersonate some popular and well-known brands to trap the user. They usually send emails that have a tone of urgency. In this condition usually, users share or click on the given malicious link. Now, this is the best example of how they use social engineering tactics to fool people to download and install malicious files.
2) Whailing/CEO
In this, the hacker uses social media platforms or other means to find the name of the CEO or some higher authority person’s name. In this way, they impersonate the person and use a fake email id to ask for a money transfer or request the recipient to review the attached document.
3) Smishing
In this, the cybercriminals send a message which has some link. If the recipient clicks on the link, then some malicious malware would install on the user system.
There are many other ways in which they can trap you. Let’s find out some common ways to identify these frauds.
1) A domain name is misspelled
The most common way to identify a phishing attack is by checking the grammatical or spelling errors in the mail. The name is misspelled or there are some grammatical mistakes in the mail or the message
If this is the case, then you need to be alert as it is a phishing attack
2) Suspicious links and attachments
If you receive an email that does not match the previous mail id of your company, then you can suspect it to be a phishing attack. Or if some link is attached to the email then you must check the link without directly clicking on it, just take your mouse to check the destination URL. If it does not match the company’s website, then it is a phishing attack
3) Sense of urgency
If you find the message or mail has a huge sense of urgency, then it could be a phishing attack. They try to create a panic situation and force you to take immediate action. In such conditions, you need to analyze the mail and avoid immediate action
Conclusion
In this article, we try to highlight some simple and easy ways to identify phishing attacks. The best way is to be alert to all small detail, whenever you receive any mail or message. The other way is to install some authentic antivirus software. Install K7 antivirus software to avoid all sorts of malicious files. K7 antivirus can discard and alert you whenever there is some suspicious activity.
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