Hello, Chris Lawell coming to you with another report to hopefully save you some grief and money.Did you realize that everyday you log into the internet there are people just falling over themselves to get a hold of your financial and personal information? The business of stolen information is huge online and very dangerous for you the consumer. Most of us are savvy enough to recognize a phony email from a financial institution. There have been days that I have gotten e-mails from institutions that I don't even bank at, telling me my account is in danger! It would be nice to say that all phishing scams would be that easy to notice, however they are becoming more sophisticated and harder to identify.
All phishing scams have the same goal and that is to rob you of your identity and bank accounts. So I want to take a look at the various phishing attempts out there. Before I do that though I would like to just give out this one vital piece of advice, never give out any information online. Take the few extra minutes and just do it on the phone. This is even more imperative if you have gotten any type of email, just go ahead and call the institution first. Although you may lose some of the convenience of online banking you may save yourself a whole bunch of headaches down the line.
One of the most famous phishing scams that I think we have all encountered at one time or another is the Nigerian scam. This emails is usually from a Nigerian prince who is need of transferring money into a state side account. Once he knows his money is safe he will eventually come and claim it at a later date.
The way this scam usually works is you send your information, account number, routing number etc back to the person. A small amount of money will be placed in your account only to have your account wiped clean a few days later. Many people fall victim to this scam every single day even though it is probably one of the simplest and oldest phishing scams out there. I think one of the hardest things to accept is the fact that these people were actually trying to do the right thing and help another person out.
The next method that is very popular and getting increasingly hard to recognize as fakes is the emails from financial institutions. You may receive an email from your bank, PayPal or even stock service saying that your account is in danger and you need to verify it or change the password. One these emails there will be a link for you to verify your information. Always be aware of the site that these links will take you to, more often than not the address will not match the actual name of the institution. It may be along the lines of paypalverification.com instead of PayPal.com. As stated earlier these phishing scams are highly sophisticated and many many people fall prey to them each day. Just remember that no financial institution is going to ask for any vital information from you via an e-mail. If you have any questions about your account, call your local branch or their customer service number.
The last type of phishing scam I would like to talk about is ones that seem to come from service providers. You may receive an email from Netflix or AOL saying that your credit card could not be verified to retry it. You click on the link and are brought to a page that has you reenter your credit card information. However this information is not going to Netflix it is either going to be used by a third party scammer or sold. Again just realize that many companies will not send an email with a link in it asking for credit card information. Most of the time they will send you an official email stating that you need to go to their homepage and update your information.
The best advice I can give you is to be vigilant and always read and verify any emails you may get asking for any personal or financial information. You may also want to make the real company aware of any types of emails like this so they can look into it and also warn their customers as well.
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