What is a Phishing Attack
Phishing is an attempt to trick you in giving out personal information such as bank accounts, passwords and credit card numbers.
They work by someone contacting you pretending they are from a legitimate business. They then ask you to provide or confirm certain confidential information.This contact can come in a variety of formats such as email, social media, phone call or text message. The messages are designed to look genuine and often use copied logos and branding from the legitimate company.
Once the scammer has this information they can then use this to carry out fraudulent activities such as emptying your bank account or using your credit cards.
How to Avoid a Phishing Attack
Some tips to help you avoid a phishing attack are:
- Don’t reply to any suspicious looking emails or messages that ask you to confirm or update any information about your account whether they are from a coworker, finance company, friend, bank etc.
- Don’t click or visit any links contained in suspicious emails or messages. Even if the website looks legit it will most likely infect your computer or do something worse.
- Legitimate businesses, organisations and government departments will never send you a message to ask for your login information or sensitive personal information. If in doubt ring the organisation in question but don’t ring any numbers listed in the suspicious message.
- Ignore emails that try to convey a sense of urgency and / or are requesting you to “Verify your account” right away due to ‘security issues’, ‘suspicious activity’ or ‘failed login attempt’ or the like.
- Do not copy website links from suspicious messages and paste them into your web browser.
- Never open or save any documents or attachments that come from possible spam and / or virus mails.
- Never send confidential information about any of your accounts in an email.
- If you’re unsure or suspicious about an email from a ‘friend’ or ‘colleague, call them (ie don’t respond to the suspicious email) to see if that really was a legitimate message.
Further information is provided at the Australian Government’s Scam Watch website – http://www.scamwatch.gov.au/