How Do You Know an Email Phishing Scam When You See One?
Monday, April 28th, 2008Email phishing is a way for scammers to attempt to collect vital financial and personal information from the people to whom they are sent. This is potentially a very expensive lesson if one falls for the emails. While many are very easy to recognize, others are becoming quite sophisticated and can take even the most astute person
How email phishing is being used is to collect your private information such as personal data and financial accounts data. Once he has these, the email scammer can then use your information fraudulently. He could go straight to the financial accounts you gave him information about and steal the funds within the account. Or he could use your personal information to set up ways whereby he can still get money but end up leaving you holding the bag such as taking out a credit card in your name.
Such emails include the ones in which a foreign individual wishes to transfer money into a state side account so that he may remove such money at a later date. This includes the giving of your account information, having a small amount of money placed into the account, and then a large amount of money withdrawn. It is unfortunate that many people do fall for this simple email phishing technique.
A much more sophisticated type of phishing email is one that appears to be from your banking institution. It will have all the right headers and colors and look very official. It will usually state that due to some problem, you need to go and update your personal information at their website. The email will even kindly present you with a link to the site. You click this and go to a site that looks just like what you would expect at your financial institution. However, if you do enter your login and password, you have just given the crooks what they need to get into your account at the real financial institution’s website. Do NOT ever go to your financial institution’s website through a link within an email. Just a sound piece of advice.
What you can do the most to help with this email phishing problem is to take action and report any email that doesn’t look right. If you receive emails from anyone asking you to do something money wise that you did not request, report it to the authorities. You would much rather report a perfectly legitimate email and have made a mistake than to not have and end up losing your identity or money.