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Home > Financial Education > Phishing
What is Phishing?
Phishing attacks are spoofed e-mails and fraudulent web sites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, social security numbers, etc. By hijacking the trusted brands of banks and credit card companies, phishers are able to convince many recipients to respond to them.
Tips To Avoid Phishing Scams
- Be suspicious of any e-mail with urgent requests for personal financial information.
- Don't use the links in an e-mail to get to any web page, if you suspect the message might not be authentic.
- Always ensure that you are using a secure web site when submitting credit card or other sensitive information. Look for the lock icon in the browser border (but not in the site content itself. It means nothing there). If there is no lock icon do NOT submit any personal information. A lock icon does not mean the site is safe, but the absence of a lock icon tells you the site is NOT safe.
- Regularly log into your online accounts and check your bank and credit card statements to make sure that all transactions are legitimate.
- Ensure that your browser is up to date and security patches applied.
- Protect your computer with anti-virus and anti-spyware software, and a firewall, and keep them up to date. Many phishing sites will try to secretly download a malicious program onto your computer. Anti-virus and anti-spyware software will not only block the download but also alert you that the attempt was made.
- Use a spam filtering service from your ISP or use spam filtering software to keep phishing e-mails out of your inbox.
- Always report phishing or spoofed e-mails to the following groups:
- Forward e-mail to reportphishing@antiphishing.com
- Forward e-mail to the Federal Trade Commission at spam@uce.gov
- Notify the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) of the FBI by filing a complaint on their web site at www.ic3.gov
- When forwarding spoofed messages, always include the entire original e-mail with its original header information
See also:
How to Take Action if You're a Victim
Protecting Your Financial Identity
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