Ever since the internet has been around, phishing and extortion through phishing have been common occurrences. Phishing is a cybercrime in which a target or targets are contacted by email, telephone or text message by someone posing as a legitimate institution to lure individuals into providing sensitive data such as personally identifiable information, banking and credit card details, and passwords. It is imperial to protect yourself and your devices from phishing threats. Let’s look at how that can be done.
- Recognise a phishing attempt
Scammers often use email and text messages to trick people into giving them personal details or money. The emails are carefully worded and look like they are from legitimate companies. They usually start with a reason or incentive that they have contacted you. These can range from:-
- saying they’ve noticed some suspicious activity or log-in attempts
- claiming there’s a problem with your account or your payment information
- saying you must confirm some personal information
Small details, like a slightly different email address or a grammatically incorrect email, can be a tip-off that the email or text is a scam. You can always contact the customer care of the company and double-check the information in the scammer’s email.
2. Use a spam filter
When you enable email filtering, you allow the software to independently analyze incoming emails for red flags that signal spam/phishing content and automatically move those emails to a separate folder. Almost all email services provide you with a “Spam” or “Junk” folder and do it for you.
3. What action should you take?
If you don’t have an account with the company the scammer is trying to impersonate, you can simply ignore the email and delete it from your inbox. You can also report emails as scams or phishing attempts. If you do have an account, as mentioned above you can contact them and report this instance of phishing.
4. What to do if you responded to a phishing email
In India, if you receive an email pretending to be the Income Tax Department, you can forward the e-mail or website URL to [email protected]. A copy may also be forwarded to [email protected] . If it is not pertaining to the same, you can mail your details to [email protected]
