Sometimes phishing attacks are easy to spot, especially the ones from an African dictator who wants to send you millions and will pay you a fee for doing so. However, many others are harder to spot particular ones that seem to come from ebay or paypal trying to get you to give over your paypal login details. Here are some tips to help you avoid most phishing attempts.
What is phishing? ghacks describes it as:
- Phishing always requires a user to visit a specifically prepared website (most of the time through a link that is added in emails or messaging)
- The fake website looks a lot like the real website (there are ways to detect fake websites)
- The goal of the attackers is to get the user to enter the data that they are after into a web form
Never Click on Links in Email
Most phishing attacks are received by email, asking you to go the paypal Login page or the login pages of other sites to login like the Facebook login page. Some of these fake emails are easy to spot, whereas others are very professional done. The best tip is to not click on any links in these emails and instead open a new browser window or tab and go directly to relevant site. If there really are any notices from paypal asking you to check your account details then you will find them here.
Other Steps To Protect Against Phishing
- Trust your browser: Most web browsers these days come with phishing protection enabled. The lists that they use are usually updated several times a day so new sites are included very quickly
- Trust your email client: Many email clients like gmail also have phishing protection built in. You can help their services by reporting any phishing emails that are missed
- Use A Password Manager: If your password manager like LastPass won’t log you in like, then the site you are at Password managers can be an excellent aid. If you have saved the login for a website in the password manager you usually can login automatically (Last Pass for example supports that option). The password manager will only work on the real website and not the phishing site
If you have any other tips on avoiding phishing attacks then please leave them in a comment below
