Facts that Will Help You Identify Phishing Attacks

Phishing messages are one of the scarier threats out there, especially when you consider that they force you to be on edge about most messages you receive, regardless of how sound they might appear to be. Thankfully, there are various telltale signs that you can look for when analyzing the messages you receive on a daily basis that can clue you in on some of the more suspicious phishing messages.

The Federal Trade Commission has identified several ways you can determine if an email is a phishing scam. Here are some of them:

• Phishing messages come from companies or services you are familiar with. The most successful phishing campaigns out there will try to imitate services that you are familiar with from big names like Netflix, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and others.
• Phishing messages will try to trick you into clicking a link or downloading an attachment. More often than not, a phishing email will try to steal something from you or convince you to download a malicious attachment. With these goals at the top of your mind, you’ll have an idea of what kinds of messages you should be on the lookout for. The most convincing phishing campaigns will look like receipts, invoices, shipping information, password resets, confirmation numbers, and so on. If you see any unsolicited attachments on emails, be sure to think twice before downloading them or clicking on any links–--at least long enough to identify the true sender.
• Phishing messages might ask you to update financial credentials or confirm sensitive information. Phishing messages may also ask you to change certain credentials or confirm financial information. They do this because of how popular online retail is these days and because they know people are paranoid about their account access. If you ever get emails like these, you can easily check their authenticity by accessing whatever service is requesting the change through a trusted portal (the way you normally would access it outside of your email). You can then verify whether it’s actually “required” or not.

It isn’t always easy to identify phishing attacks, though. Sometimes they can be so cleverly hidden that they don’t give themselves away until it’s too late. The best way to stay as safe as possible is to implement as many preventative measures as possible and to train your employees to identify these messages as best they can. This will help to eliminate the need for damage control in the face of a phishing attack. If you are unsure of how to go about this process, Computerware can help each step of the way.

With our trusted technicians on your side, you’ll have nothing to fear from phishing attacks. To learn more, reach out to us at (703) 821-8200.