We live in a fully digital age where most of our valuable data is online, and criminals know it. In recent years Phishing cases have increased significantly and its variants, so it is crucial to follow a series of guidelines to avoid being scammed by mail or SMS.
By following these tips you will have greater protection against these scams, identity theft, theft of bank details and much more.
4 tips to avoid being scammed by email
First, you should take a look at a staple to separate the wheat from the chaff as to what is fraudulent. If you see spelling or grammatical errors, there is almost a 100% chance that they are trying to mislead you. It is common for phishing campaigns to be full of all kinds of spelling or grammatical errors: from missing accent marks to to gender-matching errors. This is because cybercriminals often write messages in English and, when translating them, the flaws of these translation tools come to light.
Another aspect that can help us avoid being scammed by email is the fact that the impersonation is not even complete and we see an email from a free service like Gmail, Outlook or Yahoo instead of an email address from the company. Trust us; Netflix will never send you an email from a netflix@gmail.com.
Similar to the above, if the message seems correct and you doubt the legitimacy of the link in question, beware as a malicious website impersonates a legitimate one in order to trick us into providing sensitive information such as passwords, account details or credit card numbers. In this case, look for clues that help you tell if it is real or fake, such as the URL is not correct or it is slightly different from the legitimate website.
Finally, real and certified websites use security protocols, so the website address should be https://. In this way, you will know that browsing is private and some of your sensitive data is not being leaked.
3 ways to avoid smishing by SMS
In the case of phishing scams through SMS (known as smishing), we can also apply a series of protocols to avoid falling into the trap. As in the previous one, check possible spelling and grammatical errors in the text messages you receive, but also check the sender’s phone number. There are tools to make it look like the legitimate one, but if it doesn’t even match an official phone number for the company they’re impersonating, be suspicious.
Generally, they try to pressure victims with messages that indicate some urgency or threat. “We have not received your bill payment”, “we are going to cut your line”, etc. In this case, if you are sure that you are up to date with the payment, it is better that you contact the customer service of the company that requires an urgent payment so that you can verify if there is an incident or not.
Sometimes the urgency will be in your favor, as in recent examples in which they pretend to be the Treasury for a return of the Income statement and they urgently need your information to proceed with the payment, which ends up causing them to keep your bank details to use them to your advantage.
Finally, be especially suspicious if the message asks you to click a link, but doesn’t even tell you why you should. They know that we see a highlighted URL and our finger goes practically only to click on said link, but avoid it.
