Phishing-101
A phishing email is designed to steal a person’s identity. The scammer uses certain tactics to get you to provide personal information, which they can use to access bank accounts or other sensitive information. They will try to get your passwords, credit or debit card numbers, birth dates, pin numbers, passwords and other personal information they can use to steal your identity. The procedure used to persuade their victims to give out personal information has been labeled as a form of social engineering.
Scammers normally launch their attack with a mass mailing of spam emails, millions of email clients are targeted in one single mailing. The subject of the email is designed to trigger an immediate response from the user. Many people will respond without thinking and divulge personal information to the scammer.
A phishing email may include wording such as this:
“Online security alert.”
“Due to the number of invalid login attempts on your account we had to issue this warning and put some extra verification process and ensure your identity and your account are secured.”
“Please click on the “sign in to online banking” to continue the verification process and ensure all information to you account is well filled.”
The email is often a very good copy of one from a website you trust such as PayPal, EBay or your online bank account. Most of them do a good job of displaying the logo’s and graphics of the company they are pretending to be. In some cases, it is very difficult to tell the difference between a scam email and a legitimate one from the company. A good tip is to look for incorrect grammar, poorly written text, misspelled words, or typos such as in the above example, which is a quote from an actual phishing email.
The email will tell you to follow their link to the website and log in to update your account. Although the link appears to be the link of the actual company, it is not. The scammer knows how to cloak the link it will take you to a website they have set up for phishing purposes. If you hover on the link in the email and look at the address bar at the bottom of your browser, you will see the web address the link is pointing to. The website will be a replica of the Company website, however it is, in reality, only a copy designed to steal your financial information. You may think you are on the company site and give out your personal information. This information, instead, will be in the hands of thieves.
What are the Consequences?
If you are taken in by this scam and give out your information, you may have your identity stolen, your bank or PayPal account cleaned out, become the victim of credit card fraud, among other things.
The crooks may use the information for their own gain or sell it to other criminals for a profit. They can set up an account for automatic online payments from your account to them for fraudulent payments. They will be able to access your bank account, PayPal, credit card, or other account and transfer money to their own bank accounts. They may also be able to withdraw money from your account using an ATM by making a copy of your card and using your pin number.
Even if a small number of people are taken in by the fraud, it still proves very profitable for the thieves. They are not spending any money to send these emails to millions of users. A one percent response is all it takes for them to make big profits.
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