5 Tips to Avoid Being Scammed by a Phishing Email

By Chloe Gunn

What Are Phishing Emails?

Phishing is when someone tries to collect your personal information - think bank account numbers and passwords - to impersonate or defraud you. Don’t be fooled by the use of the company’s logo, or the tone of language and design, these emails can appear legitimate and are on the rise: now being one of the most common security challenges for individuals and companies.

What Should I Look For?

1. Emails containing alerts of an account hacking, security breech from a specific company, or online documents that need to be viewed online or downloaded as a compressed file (usually a zip file)

2. Mismatched email domains VS where it claims to be from. For example, an email from PayPal but the sender is bob@nomail.com. Similar to a mismatched URL - with your mouse hover over the link and if the address you see doesn’t match the place it’s saying it’ll take you, you caught a phish.

3. Emails requesting personal information (bank account, user name, password, etc.) or requesting for you to log into a webpage, or click onto a link to become rich... it is not legitimate (sorry).

4. Out of context emails, for example, an email that claims that it comes from DHL, but you are not expecting to receive a package

5. If the email refers to you in a generic manner, 'Dear You…'

I Caught a Phish Now What?

If you have caught a phishing email and you have not clicked any links or attachments your system is safe. If you have provided personal information you can report it on the government website ‘CERT’, the quick and easy filter page will help you identify the necessary actions.

Photo by Artem Bali on Unsplash, to view license infomation please click here.

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