Decoding the Signs of Phishing Attempts

Introduction:

Phishing is a scam that targets users of email, social media, instant messaging, and other communication systems. In a typical phishing attack, the attacker tries to acquire sensitive data such as usernames, passwords, credit card details, and financial information by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. At present, in the United States, more than 74% of organizations are experiencing phishing attacks.

• What are the signs of phishing attempts?

Phishing scams usually come from an email or instant message which claims to be from a legitimate organization or business. These messages may try to convince you to click on a link within the message by claiming something like “check out this website” or “you need to update your account now.” Once they have tricked you into clicking on their link, they will often take you through multiple pages asking for personal information, including:

• Password
• Mother’s maiden name
• Credit card number (and other information required to make purchases online)

When you type this information into their fake website, they will steal your identity and use it for criminal activity. The best way to stop them is never to enter any of your details on a site you do not know the source. Sometimes phishers may pose as a legitimate company and ask you to update your account with sensitive data. If a bank or another serious business had sent the email, they would have already had all your details, so they would not need to ask you for this information. Instead, phishers might send an email saying “your account has been hacked” or “we have detected unusual activity on your account” and will try to trick you into giving them this information.

Signs of Phishing Attempts:

The signs of a phishing attempt are:

• You were sent an email from someone you don’t know who wants personal information from you. If you do not trust the source, never enter any personal details as phishers can be very convincing.
• The message was about an internet scam asking for personal details such as passwords and credit card numbers. Be careful when entering your details online, as scammers may store them without your knowledge.
• When it comes to protecting yourself on the web, there is no substitute for sense. Use your common sense and think about where you are getting your information. If you aren’t sure about something, look it up! Phishing is a common type of internet crime used to steal money or identity details by pretending to be a trustworthy company.
• Internet security can be broken down into two categories: physical and digital. The internet has caused the death of many people due to their failure to grasp the dangers of online life. Still, now that most business happens through programs like Microsoft Excel or Adobe Photoshop, failure to take security seriously will fail one’s company.
• But perhaps one of the most important security standpoints is identity theft. There are many different ways people can steal your information and cause problems for you, but undoubtedly one of the most prominent ways is through phishing.

Significance of Preventing Phishing Attempts:

Phishing is essentially when someone sends out a false email that looks like it comes from an official source such as PayPal or Apple to get personal information about you. This may be a password or a credit card number, but anything used online can be stolen by a good enough phisher. Because of this, there has been a lot of research on preventing these attacks. SSL certificates are a good measure to prevent phishing attempts.

Secure Socket Layer or SSL certificate is a security protocol that offers an encrypted channel for in-transit communication between the web browser and the client-server network. This keeps out phishing attempts and MITM attacks. A user can click on a padlock to check whether the certificate is issued to the intended person or not, thereby increasing credibility. SSL certificates come in varying kinds and at different validation levels.

There are unique SSL certs that offer premium encryption at affordable prices for different needs. Reliable Certificate Authorities (CAs) such as Comodo, RapidSSL, AlphaSSL offer a whole range of quality certificates such as Comodo SSL wildcard, RapidSSL Single Domain SSL cert, etc.

Wondering about the meaning of a wildcard SSL certificate? Let’s spell it out for you! Suppose you own a business website with a lot of level-one subdomains. In that case, you might wish to go for a wildcard SSL certificate that can secure an unlimited number of level-one subdomains beneath the chosen primary domain.

With many affordable options in the market, such as PositiveSSL wildcard, RapidSSL wildcard certificate, you can save a lot of money on buying separate single domain SSL certs for each new subdomain that you add, not to mention the lack of cert management hassles!

Conclusion:

How can a company stop phishing emails and find phishing attacks? First, prioritizing the alerts received from the users can decrease phishing attempts. In this article, we have compiled the list of phishing attempts signs. Also, you can know the importance of the SSL Wildcard certificate from this article.

Support us!

All your donations will be used to pay the magazine’s journalists and to support the ongoing costs of maintaining the site.