What is phishing?
Phishing is one of the most common forms of cybercriminality.
Criminals will pretend to be legitimate persons are organisations in order to acquire sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers and more.
This most commonly happens through emails, social media and text messages.
The term is derived from the word 'fishing'. Just like with 'fishing', phishing uses bait to reel in what they want.
Different kinds of phishing
E-mail phishing most commonly will have a legitimate looking email from an organisation you know. However, the links lead you to a different site in an attempt to capture your personal information.
Spear-phishing is a more targetted and sophisticated approach where they are targetting you specifically using known information about you and your relationships.
Text phishing is a text message that appears to come from a legitimate organisation but contains a fraudulant link or requests for personal information.
Phone phishing is when a criminal pretends to be a representative of a legitimate business in an attempt to acquire your personal information.
How to recognize the signs?
Phishing attacks are becoming more and more sophisticated.
Nevertheless, there are some signals that can help you spot a phishing attempt.
- Getting an email from a company you have had no recent interactions or contact with.
- Try to spot mistakes or strange urls.
- Phishing attempts will often contain either a message of urgency or some kind of threat.
- Some phishing attempts will contain spelling mistakes.
- Never open an attachment of someone you don't know or trust.
Conclusie
Phishing is a widespread problem that is getting worse.
Always be careful with your personal communication.
Try to look for signs of phishing in communication you didn't expect.
Don't click on links in emails without inspecting them first!
