How to Spot and Avoid Phishing Emails? Here Is a Guidance

Internet fraud is becoming increasingly rampant, and fraudulent emails, text messages and phone calls that steal personal information and financial assets are common. Phishing is one of the ancient and common tricks. This article will explain in detail what phishing is and how to identify and avoid such attacks.

What is phishing?

To identify phishing emails, you must first understand the nature of phishing. Phishing is a cyber attack designed to steal your personal information, including personal identity information, bank passwords, credit card numbers, etc. Cyber ​​criminals often disguise themselves as your friends or acquaintances, inducing you to click on suspicious links.

SMS and email are the most commonly used avenues in phishing attacks. The scammers keep updating their strategies to make their tricks more difficult to identify. Read on to learn how to identify and avoid phishing emails.

How to identify phishing emails?

As we said, some cunning liars will hide their true identities. Let's take email as an example to illustrate how to identify phishing emails.

Compared to regular emails, phishing emails usually contain the following suspicious characteristics:

• General Names: Phishing emails usually use vague names such as "dear customer", "hello", etc., because the scammers do not know your real name.
• Urgent Action Requirements: Scammers will force you to take immediate action, such as clicking on a link or filling in personal information, reducing your chances of double-checking the content of the email.
• Spelling or grammatical errors: Emails from regular companies and organizations are usually reviewed by professionals and do not show obvious spelling or grammatical errors. This type of error may exist in phishing emails.
• Suspicious link or attachment: Hover over the link to see the real address of the link. Compare whether the display address and the actual address are consistent.
• Request personal information: When an email requires you to provide personal information, especially when the content of the email itself seems suspicious, be vigilant.
• Services that have not been used: Be careful if you receive emails from services that you have never used. If the email requires you to provide personal information or change your account information, it should be considered a phishing email.

How to avoid phishing?

By reading this, you should have already learned about some of the important characteristics of phishing emails. To avoid becoming a victim of phishing, you should always be alert, be skeptical about the emails, spam and text messages you receive, and be aware of the latest phishing attacks. Here are some additional suggestions:

• Don't share your personal information easily. If you are unsure of the authenticity of the email, please do not provide any personal information.
• Set different passwords for different accounts. This helps minimize the impact on other accounts when you miss the fishing trap.
• Use multi-factor authentication. It is recommended that you set up multi-factor verification for your account login, such as facial recognition, fingerprint scanning, PIN code, etc.

How to prevent phishing emails from being received? Phishing emails may be disguised as notification or warning emails from certain official companies, or hidden in spam. Therefore, it is highly recommended that you block all spam.

If you clicked on the link in the phishing email, reset your account password immediately and report the situation to the company or organization that is being impersonated.

In addition, you should also record all information you provide to the phishing scammer as future evidence. If you lose money or encounter other problems, please contact relevant government departments for help.

Conclusion

This article details how to identify and avoid phishing emails. Hope this article helps you gain insight into phishing scams and improve your cybersecurity awareness.

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