Phishing is where the scammers send out messages attempting to trick people into divulging their login and password or other personal details or financial details. Often this is by pretending to be from the government or a trusted retailer or broadband supplier or any trusted organisation.
It is nearly impossible to avoid these people getting your contact information but you can reduce the chances as follows:
Phishing is where the scammers send out messages attempting to trick people into divulging their login and password or other personal details or financial details. Often this is by pretending to be from the government or a trusted retailer or broadband supplier or any trusted organisation.
It is nearly impossible to avoid these people getting your contact information but you can reduce the chances as follows:
- Learn to spot the spams
Be careful over any emails that you did expect and check the details for the signs of a scam. These include:
- The content makes little sense e.g. from a Chinese company trying to sell you replacement valves for your generator.
- The sender is unknown or anonymous.
- The email may contain misspelled words and sentences purposely designed to fool spam filters such as Amaz0n for Amazon.
- Offers that seem too good to be true.
- A desperate urgency, pushing you to click or respond immediately or lose the chance.
- Links that when you hover the cursor over them go to somewhere that doesn’t match the link.
- Avoid public posts
Anytime you put your email address on the Internet it can be seen and recorded by many people. Be careful where you sue your email address and if necessary create fake temporary email addresses.
- Use graphics to disguise your email address. Make it into a graphic – that is more difficult for screen scrapers to make sense of.
- Confuse
Scramble, your email address by using HTML and JavaScript in emails. This is harder for screen readers to see the real email address.
Be careful with your email address – you don’t want it to taken over by scammers.
If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.
