How to recognize phishing attacks in 2020 – Scammers, attackers use email or text messages to trick you into giving them your personal information. But don’t worry, there are several ways to protect yourself. In this blog, I’m going to introduce how you can avoid getting tricked by scammers and attackers.
1 – How Can You Recognize Phishing Attacks?
Attackers might try to steal your sensitive information such as account numbers, passwords, social security numbers by phishing attacks. If they get sensitive information, they might have your email, bank or other accounts. Attackers send numerous phishing attacks every day therefore you should pay attention to your emails. According to statistics, people lost 57 million dollars to attackers by phishing attacks in only one year.
Attackers often update their tactics, but some signs help us to recognize phishing attacks.
Phishing emails often look like they’re sent from a company you know or trust. They usually look like they’re from a bank, a credit card company, an online store, etc.
Attackers often tell a story to click on a link or open an attachment.
- say they’ve noticed some suspicious activity to change your password
- say you must confirm your sensitive information
- offer coupons for free stuff
- say you to click on a link to make payment
2 – How Can You Protect Yourself From Phishing Attacks?
Sometimes your email spam filter may help you to avoid phishing attacks. But attackers try to trick spam filters. Here are three steps to protect yourself today.
- Use security software to protect your computer. Don’t pass the updates of the security software so it can deal with any security threats and vulnerabilities.
- Set software to update automatically to protect your phone. These updates may give you critical protection against security threats and vulnerabilities.
- Use multi-factor authentication to protect your accounts. Using multi-factor authentication is one of the most important ways to protect from phishing attacks. If an attacker stole your login credentials, he can’t get access to login to your account because of multi-factor authentication. Multi-factor authentication requires two or more credentials to log you in. The additional credentials you need to login to your accounts fall into three categories:
- Password, pin – Something you know
- A phone number to get one-time passcodes – Something you have
- Biometric information like fingerprints, retina, voice – Something you are
3 – What Should You Do If You Suspect a Phishing Attack?
If you get an email that asks you to click on a link or open an attachment, answer the question:
Do I know that person or the company that contacted me?
If the answer is “NO” It can be a phishing attack. Go back and review the information in How can you recognize phishing? And check if the signs of a phishing attack match with the emails. If they match, delete the message.
If the answer is “YES” contact the company or the person using the phone number because if it’s a phishing attack, using email to contact is not going to work because the attacker already has access to the email. After contacting the company or the person, If the company/person verifies the email, You can click on the links and open attachments.
“This post is originally published at www.keepnetlabs.com”
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