Phishing is where scammers send you emails or texts or use bad websites to pretend to be someone you trust or an organisation you would trust, in order to get your confidential information such as login and password or account information, birth date etc.

Google has created a test to let you experience receiving phishing messages and see how you react.

https://phishingquiz.withgoogle.com/

It asks for your name and email address but suggests you make these up as they are not intended to be real.

It shows a set of 8 examples on screen one at a time and gives enough information for you to be identify each as phishing or legitimate and after you have chosen, for each it explains why to trust or not to trust the example.

This is a great and easy way to teach people what to look for in incoming messages to identify them as legitimate or dodgy.

The vast majority of scam messages are obviously fake if you just take note of who is sending it and why.

But some scammers do put in the effort to make their scam messages look authentic and it can be tricky to be sure if those messages are real or fake.

If in doubt – don’t open the message – contact the organisation or person directly i.e. look up their contact details and don’t count on anything in a message being real.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.