Phishing Emails and Viruses

Lately, we have had an influx in virus removal from Microsoft© Windows Computers which has quite a few known ways to get on a computer.

In this blog, I will discuss phishing emails. "Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication."

How to spot a phishing email:

1. Check who the email is addressed to and who it is from? Is it you and do you recognize the sender? If the answer to both of these is no, then immediately delete it.

2. The subject of the email - Does it say something about forwarding you a scan file? Were you expecting it? - Again, if you say yes to the first and no to the second, then just delete it.

3. The attachement - Most email services block the sending of the attachements if they meet certain extensions. Phishers found a way around this by sending it in a zip file. If you were not expecting a file from someone, just delete it.

4. Look at the body of the message, the opening may be overly formal or just formal using Mr. or Mrs., also, look for if the email is asking for information from you. If it is, it is phishing. No company will ever email you asking you for your personal information or password. Now, back to the from address. Is the name the same in the from field as it is in the closing of the email? If the email meets any of this criteria, it is 99% safe to delete.

5. Spelling - Always a major one (and myself being a big person on spelling and grammer) I always look at these. If there are mistakes, especially on common words that we use everyday (such as everyday, being spelled everday) then you know that it is potentially a phishing scam.

If any of this sounds familiar to you and you went ahead and opened the attachment, you should give us a call to make sure your computer is not infected. Nothing upsets someone more than a slow computer with a ton of pop-ups making the computer practically unusable.

 

CEW