Here's a preventable headline: "Phishing is the leading cause of personal data breaches for the third year in a row."
If you've heard about phishing but you're not sure what it means, you're not alone. Unfortunately, there's still a large portion of us that fall victim to it. At One Nevada, we've learned how to spot phishing, and we want to help prevent you from becoming a victim.
Phishing is a type of social engineering through email that attempts to trick you into performing a task, such as clicking a link or email attachment that's either malicious or requests sensitive information.
Phishing can be hard to recognize.In many cases, the fraudsters might request your online banking credentials or other important login or personal information. These emails often seem to be coming from a reputable source, such as your financial institution, a large technology company, or a professional service you've used. Keep in mind, One Nevada will never ask for your account, login, or other personally identifying information via email.
It's important to note, these perpetrators are always shifting tactics and comingup with new ways to fool us. In addition to email phishing, fraudsters also use text messaging (smishing), phone calls (vishing), and more.
Here are some clues to help you identify phising:
• There's a generic greeting such as addressed to a group, or just "Dear Member," for instance.
• It comes from an unknown sender.
• It comes from a known sender but uses a different email address than usual.
• It contains a link or attachment.
• There's a button making it easy to log in to your account. Often they claim you need to verify personal or account details.
• There's a request for sensitive information that you normally would not provide.
• The message attempts to convey a sense of urgency, claiming something "bad" will happen if you don't click or respond right away.
• There are typos or it's written unprofessionally.
How to avoid becoming today's catch:
• Don't click email links or attachments unless you're 100% sure they're safe.
• Keep your security software updated at all times.
• Use multi-factor authentication (MFA) when it's available for any account.
• Avoid sending sensitive information in email. It isn't safe in most cases.
• Don't click buttons or links in emails to log in to your accounts. Instead, log in to your accounts directly using pre-saved links or using website addresses you know.
We know it's not always easy to identify these phishing scams, so follow these tips and be on alert for suspicious emails. As always, we want to help you stay protected. If you suspect you're being targeted or you mistakenly gave out any personal information, give us a call right away so we can help prevent fraudulent account activity.