How to avoid becoming a victim of Phishing

Phishing, as the word suggests, is a process whereby fraudsters hunt or fish for conifdential information from innocent people in the guise of a seemingly legitimate letter, phonecall, website, email, or text/SMS (Short Message Service).

Phishing is a type of fraud that is executed daily all around the world. It is not necessarily done by hackers or 'tekkies'. It is sometimes done by very likeable characters. For example, in the course of work I have received a phonecall from a person who claimed that I had met him before. He called my full name and mentioned my place of work (but I give out my business card a lot so he couldn't throw me off easily). Where he slipped was when he said he wanted me to pick up a cheque from which we would split the proceeds - Alarm bells started ringing at this point and then I abrubtly refused.

It is very likely that by now you may have once received a suspicious email or text message reuesting that you provide some personal information about yourself. Below are some of the ways you can guard against phishing:

Online

• Whenever you use the Internet to make payments or to enter banking/financial information about yourself make sure you can see a security symbol somewhere on the webpage or on your address/URL bar. The symbol is usually a padlock sign or a chain-link. This signifies that the site is protected from any potential threats (e.g. hackers, viruses, etc).
• Do not respond to any email that asks you to enter or confirm your account details, PIN (Personal Identification Number) or any other confidential information about yourself. The source of the email may sometimes appear to be from a reputable institution’s website but may infact be a deliberate immitation or clone. Banks will never ask you to confirm your account details or PIN so do not follow any web links from such sources because it is likely to be the phispher's webpage.
• Following from the last point, you need to be weary about websites and the website addresses/URLs. For example, you could log into a site that has the symbols/logos of Barclays Bank but the website address/URL may infact be http://www_barclaysbanking_net which is not part of the Barclays group. It is always best to log into the known home address of an intstitution instead of clicking on the link provided in such emails requesting personal banking/financial information.
• Do not part with money by means of cheque when dealing with an online stranger. Use a secured means like PayPal which is separate from your bank account. Fraudsters may want you to write a cheque for an amount relatively smaller than that which is supposedly owed by a third party due to payback into your account, with a promise to allow you keep the extra change – Don’t fall for it!

Text/SMS

• If you ever receive an SMS saying that you have won a prize, for example, then exercise caution as this is a good avenue to get phished. Do a bit of research and find out if there is indeed an ongoing promotion by the supposed company that sent the SMS. Do not call the number from which the SMS came.
• Sometimes it is not always money that the fraudster is after. An SMS could ask you to enter a recharge voucher code/number of a particular value in order to confirm your prize. This requires you purchasing talktime of say £10, for example, and sending the pin code to the sender of the SMS. Once you’ve done that you’ve been conned!

Another implicit way of being targeted for phishing is by getting drawn through chatroooms. You may have received a friend request from an unknown person and before long you both start get friendly and to your surprise you find that you both have a lot in common. The moment your guard is down you may be ready to believe anything that you read and consequently yield to the requests of a potential scam artist. As much as possible it is best to deal with people face-to-face. Even with Ebay I am sceptical about doing transactions with unseen faces, despite the reassurance that PayPal can protect the consumer.

As with most successful frauds the victim is usually guilty of being greedy or desperate. Once you are in either state you tend to throw caution to the wind and that is what fraudsters yearn to take advantage of.