Cyber Security Awareness Month: Phishing
At the time of this writing, email is the number one attack vector used by hackers and criminals to try to rob you of your identity online.
The bad guys try to trick you into giving away your information by enticing you into filling out an online webform with your personal information. The webpage will look like a banking site, a paypal site, an online contest, or even an IRS refund. This type of attack is called phishing.
The best defense against these attacks is to try to be smarter than the phishers. You have to arm yourself with knowledge and train yourself not to trust email from online banks or similar accountholders.
Ecommerce sites, including banks, paypal, federal agencies, stock brokers, and online stores, do not initiate communication with you by email regarding your account information. Any email you receive that says that someone’s been tampering with your account, upgrading their security services, wishes to refund cash to your account, or to verify your account settings, you can ignore the email, delete it, or report it to a phishing organization.
If you are just not sure about the email, you can check with PhishTank, an online repository of phishing websites. You can copy the url of the online webform requesting your information and paste it in the PhishTank site to check if it is authentic. If you are still not sure, call your accountholder and ask.
If you think you may have fallen for a phishing scam previously, don’t panic. It does not mean that your identity has been used to open other accounts yet. What you should do is contact your credit bureaus to get a copy of your credit report so you can look for unauthorized changes. By law, you get one free credit report per year. You can contact them below.
Equifax: 800-685-1111; www.equifax.com
Experian: 888-EXPERIAN (888-397-3742); www.experian.com
TransUnion: 800-916-8800; www.transunion.com
If unauthorized changes in your credit reports are detected, you may be a victim of identity theft. A great resource to help guide you in recovery from identity theft is at the FTC here.
