Phishing Attacks

In a phishing attack, scammers will use email or text messages to trick you into giving your personal and financial information. Phishing emails may look like official correspondence from your bank, a website, friends or co-workers, but there are several ways to detect a phishing attack.

Rule 1: Study the sender. Don’t just look at the display name of the sender, look at the actual email address. Sometimes you can do that by hovering over the sender’s email, or on a mobile device, press-and-hold over an email display name.

Rule 2: Study the call-to-action. Phishing emails will try to get you to click to a fake website to enter your email address and password, and then collect additional personal information. In a browser, you can hover over the button or hyperlink, and see the actual destination.

Rule 3: Look for clues in the text. Scare tactics, like placing your account on hold, billing problems, overly generic greetings, and poorly written copy are good clues.