Daily threats to websites
It seems to be an ongoing saga lately for webmasters, cleaning up one site only to find that there is another site that has been targeted with a phishing scam. Not only are they targeting websites but also phishing via email with various online scams, especially banking frauds. Every day a few of these mails get through the filters and land in my mailbox.
Email phishing
The purpose behind a cyber criminal sending out thousands of online scam emails is to get you to open your mail and divulge your personal information by one means or another. It’s that information he can use fraudulently in many ways to access your money.
I have recently found a good source of information that will explain Phishing Scams and how take some basic precautions. It’s sometimes not easy to discern whether the mail is legitimate or fake one when it arrives from a friend or legitimate company as these cyber criminals are becoming very sophisticated in what they do.
Today I received a mail from a big brand company from whom I have bought products before. Before I had a chance to open the mail my anti-virus program detected that this was a spoof mail with a trojan embedded in an enclosed zip. Had I not been protected by the antivirus mail protection it may have been a different scenario. On deeper examination of the email I could see that the email indeed was rather an amateurish attempt at phishing and not the kind of mail one would receive from such a big company.
Not all emails are easy to spot as fakes so its good to use common sense and maybe make a few enquiries before opening a mail you were not expecting. In your email client check the from address of the email, this is a big giveaway as to the legitimacy of the sender. Spending cash on good protection may in the long run save you time and effort in cleaning up the mess.
