Phishing is the illegal attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money), often for malicious reasons, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
Last week, many of you received what appeared to be emails from me asking you to click on a link to view unknown documents.
It wasn’t an email from me. It was a “phishing” expedition by unknown hackers.
So when I saw this video today, I thought I would share it. It explains some of the basic ways to spot phishing scams, which come in all kinds of packaging and disguises.
From the video:
Chances are you regularly get fake email claiming to be from companies that you do business with. However, these scam emails are trying to trick you into giving up your passwords and other information. It is important to be skeptical of every email message you receive and to learn to recognize the signs of phishing scams. Even email messages that seem to come from friends and relatives can be scams.
Although it is Mac-centered, the advice is actually applicable no matter what kind of computer you use.
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Thanks, Ian. Useful basics, most of which I knew, but there were some specifics that I did not know.
Shared this with others in my family who are less computer saavy.
That explains it.
You’d told me you were going to send documents related to the house. I assumed this was the email. It had a link to a document warehouse owned by google. I did think twice about the link and logging in with my gmail id, but the timing really was perfect.
Luckily, one of the very few things that google has done right in recent years is to recognize login attempts which aren’t quite right. They warned me about an attempted login from Idaho (I was actually on the east coast at the time). I immediately changed passwords, and nothing was breached.