April 26, 2008
Different Types of Email Phishing
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Email phishing is a very dangerous and potentially financially fatal trap that is sent via email from what appears to be a financial institution to an individual. Most of the phishing emails that one will receive are very easy to notice as fraud emails, but there are some that are very sophisticated and can take time to identify.
Basically, most email phishing scams are an attempt to gain your information, both personal and financial. With this information, the phisher can assume your identity in order to, for example, set up fraudulent accounts or he can just outright steal money from your banking or other financial accounts.
Such emails include the ones in which a foreign individual wishes to transfer money into a state side account so that he may remove such money at a later date. This includes the giving of your account information, having a small amount of money placed into the account, and then a large amount of money withdrawn. It is unfortunate that many people do fall for this simple email phishing technique.
There is another type of phishing email that is even harder to catch. It is an official looking email from your bank or credit card company or some other financial company. It requests that you update or modify your personal information at their site and provides you with a link to go there. Since it looks very official, many people click the link, go to the site and enter their login and password. After all, it looks just like your bank’s site. This is what can make these scamming emails so much harder to detect. Everything looks like it should. However, you should be aware that most financial companies will not ask you to update your information this way.
What you can do the most to help with this email phishing problem is to take action and report any email that doesn’t look right. If you receive emails from anyone asking you to do something money wise that you did not request, report it to the authorities. You would much rather report a perfectly legitimate email and have made a mistake than to not have and end up losing your identity or money.
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Filed under Spam by Sandra Wilson
