What is Phishing?
Phishing emails are fake emails sent by cybercriminals with the purpose of tricking you into gaining access either to your computer or to your personal information, especially account details. Ultimately the cybercriminals hope to make money either directly with access to your bank or credit card details or indirectly through compromising your computer and controlling it as part of a botnet. The most frequent information asked for is:
- Webmail login - to enable an upgrade or confirm your account
- Bank details - to provide a refund from a purchase or an HMRC Tax refund
- Student loan details - to confirm that you will receive this years grant
but there are many other examples.
How do I recognise phishing?
Phishing emails often follow a few similar forms:
- Alarmist or scare mongering messages and threats of account closures
- Odd From: addresses and links in email that don't match the organisation represented
- Bad grammar and misspellings
- Promises of money for little or no effort
- Deals that sound too good to be true
- Requests to donate to a charitable organization after a disaster that has been in the news
- Odd named attachments
How do I stay safe?
- Don't reply to any suspicious emails or follow their links
- Think before you fill in any information on any form, only fill it in if you're sure it's real - don't fill it in if it's suspicous
- Keep a trusted bookmark of a site for logins so you can go directly
- If you don't know what something is don't trust it - if it's too good to be true it probably isn't
- Pick a strong password and keep it secret - don't share it with other people or other accounts that you use
- Keep your browser and anti-virus up to date
What to do if I've replied to a phishing scam?
- Change the password of the account that you gave details of immediately directly from their website - make sure it's a secure https link
- If you visited a website to reply to the scam, run a full virus scan of the computer
- If the virus scan is positive - change the passwords of any other accounts
- Check for any suspicious activity on any accounts you used from that computer
More resources
- Bank Safe online: Phishing guidance
- Facebook: Security - help on phishing
- Google: how to stay safe on line - Phishing
- HMRC: how to recognise phishing
- Microsoft: how to recognise Phishing emails
- Paypal: What is and how to recognise phishing
- Student Loans Company: Online safety and phishing
- Wikipedia: phishing