Phishing: An Internet Fraud and a Cybercrime

Phishing Attacks

Have you ever encountered receiving an email with a link that took you to a fake web page and asks you to enter your personal information? These scams that usually carried out through email can get your confidential information in an instant and use it in illegal ways.

Phishing is considered as a cybercrime. It is one of the easiest security attack that uses disguised email to steal log in credentials, bank account numbers, company details and other data of the user. Cyber-criminals use these to access valuable accounts and could possibly result to identity theft.

Some phishing attacks are easy to identify, but others are difficult to catch. Emails from these cyber criminals are mostly too good to be true. They will tell you that you won a large amount of money and you need to send them your bank account number for you to claim your prize. In this case, you should triple check everything and do not give any bank details if you aren’t even expecting monetary prize from any raffle.

Some emails contain unusual attachments. Some often contains ransom ware or viruses if the user opens the attachment. Another feature is if the email has unusual sender and malicious URLs. Remember not to click any suspicious email or content from people you do not know.

Anti-Phishing Protection and Solution

There are many ways to prevent phishing attacks. First is to be aware of malicious contents even if the email came from the person you already know. Remember that cyber criminals are expert in stealing information and identity of a person and even of an institution or company. You need to filter everything before divulging any of your valuable data.

Anti-phishing services were offered by specialists to take down thousands of malicious sites. They offer anti-phishing solutions and preventions. It is important to consider if the service gives 100% phishing site success rate to prevent recurrence of malicious emails. There should be 24 x 7 proactive monitoring for them to detect everything even domain registrations. Specialized security analysts use scanning tools and premium detection capabilities to take down phishing attacks. They also combat vishing or voice phishing by monitoring suspicious transactions through cellular calls and recall its registry.

Such services is a great help to combat phishing attacks.  But, on the end of the user, you should also be responsible in all the things that you do in social media. Everyone should practice the “think before you click”.