How to Avoid Phishing Scams
So far, I have given you detailed instructions for how to pull off a Phishing scam. I am not however giving you this information so that you can go rip people off. Instead, I am showing you how a Phishing scam works so that you can avoid being ripped off. Of course, understanding how the scam works is only half of the battle. You still need to know how to spot the scam and avoid being victimized by it.
The best advice that I can give you is that if you ever get an E-mail message from your bank, your ISP, PayPal, EBay, Amazon, etc., read the note over several times. Odds are that the note will appear legitimate, but you need to look for something fishy (no pun intended). For example, does the note have misspellings or bad grammar? Is this the first message that you have ever gotten from the company? Does the company even have your E-mail address on file? If you have any suspicions at all about the message, then the message is probably illegitimate.
The best thing that you can do is to call the company that allegedly sent you the message. Never use the phone number included in the message though. Instead, take the time to look the phone number up in the phone book. It’s better to spend a few extra minutes looking up a number that you already have in front of you than to be a victim of a scam.
Obviously, you should never click on a link within a suspicious message. If you really must visit the Web site that the message claims to be from, enter the site’s address into your browser manually.
Other precautionary steps that you can take are to review your bank statements and credit card statements regularly to make sure that no one is stealing from you or making purchases in your name.
Finally, if you do receive an E-mail message that proves to be a Phishing scam, you should report the message to the company that the message claims to be from. Doing so makes the company aware of the scam so that they can report it to the proper authorities and help keep other people from being ripped off.
Read the full Article here From WindowSecurity.com