Avoiding email Phishing Scam

Phishing is a way using which scammers trick internet users out of their personal details and also financial details after which they take ownership of email accounts.

See this email

from Bank Of America 
to 
Date Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 1:58 AM
Subject Online Survey 18.11.2009

Greetings,
As today 18 November 2009, Bank of America is launching a new survey program.All customers are welcome to participate this survey. The survey will take 5 minutes and for your effort and understanding Bank of America will select most of the customers that takes this survey and reward them with $50.00 

$50.00 will be debited in your Bank of America credit/debit card in maxim 48 hours. One of our survey representative will contact you soon after you complete and submit the survey. It would be helpful if you fill it out right now. If that is not possible, please do it soon. We plan to close the survey on 20 November 2009, so do not delay. Please note that all responses will be confidential. To start completing the Survey please download the pdf form attached to this e-mail.

Your Bank of America BONUS CODE is BOA2553455/2009; Please copy/paste the code and write the code in the pdf survey file in order to get your $50.00 prize. Download

Thank you,
Andrew Michael
Cheef of Bank of America Survey Team 2009
Tell me if anyone of you have received such mails and have accidently fallen into the trap of responding to them positively.

In the next post I will tell you some of the things which you need to take care of before clicking on the links in the emails and before even replying any such emails you receive.

Replies

  • vishnu priya
    vishnu priya
    I didn't get any of such kind.,
  • sarveshgupta
    sarveshgupta
    @VP : Maybe your mail moves it to your spam folder automatically
  • sarveshgupta
    sarveshgupta
    So here are the ways which will help to protect yourself:

    1) You should never click on the links which you receive in your email instantly because they can be harmful too and this should be taken care with when you get a email from unknown people in your inbox.

    Here are few examples of the emails they would use ie #-Link-Snipped-#, #-Link-Snipped-#, #-Link-Snipped-# and these scammers would even use some 3rd party services and email you along with a forged email ID, which means that they would send you a email from some services which dont verify their email and just send it as sender ID.

    2) The Phishing emails you receive are generally built to steal your identity and your personal or financial information. Once you find a link within your email you need to mouse over on it and based on the browser you will find the linked URL in the status bar of your browser. The display shows Download option but its linking to some IP based URL which is a phished link.

    Here are a few examples of the URL which would look like the original ones originating from Microsoft.com but would generally be like #-Link-Snipped-#, #-Link-Snipped-# & #-Link-Snipped-# etc and in a hurry while reading these emails you would not spell check these domain names and just visit them and enter your real information which would later be used by them.

    3) Normally you would expect your friend to send you a email with a normal subject message, but generally many people get excited when they get messages like the following :
    Verify your account
    Limited Period Free Samples offer
    Final Warning – Confirm your account within 48 hours
    Click on the link to verify your account
    Click on the link to gain access to your account
    Enter your CC Information for Free Shipping
    Reactivate your Email Account within 48 Hours


    Whenever you receive any emails like these you would get excited to read it and click on the links within it without verifying the correct details, because of which the chances of getting into these scams are very high. The title does make a lot of difference and when the sender is trying to send you information about some urgent issue then the click rate or read rate increases.


    Also most of the legit companies would not require you to enter your personal information or financial account details through email accounts hence never ever enter them.

    Even if you have entered your details into one of these scams, you should now move away and make sure to avoid further conversations with the scammers because the more you talk with them, the personal information you would be sharing with them.
  • sarveshgupta
    sarveshgupta
    So have you witnessed such thing like clicking on a familiar but incorrect website link like micosoft.com
  • Pechu
    Pechu
    Good Info. Lots and Lots of people fall for this Phishing. Due to which rapidshare, paypal and email accounts are being lost control.
    Its our duty to safeguard our accounts. Don't click unknown links. Be safe...! 😀
  • Mahesh Dahale
    Mahesh Dahale
    GooD information...

    its really help full to all

You are reading an archived discussion.

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