Phishing
Phishing is a technique used to gain personal information for purposes
of identity theft, using fraudulent e-mail messages that appear to come
from legitimate businesses. These authentic-looking messages are designed
to fool recipients into divulging personal data such as account numbers
and passwords, credit card numbers and Social Security numbers.
Phishing, also referred
to as brand spoofing or carding, is a variation on “fishing,”
the idea being that bait is thrown out with the hopes that while most
will ignore the bait, some will be tempted into biting.
The Federal Trade
Commission suggests these tips to help you avoid getting hooked by a
phishing scam:
If you get an email
or pop-up message that asks for personal or financial information, do
not reply or click on the link in the message. Legitimate companies
don’t ask for this information via email.
- Don’t
email personal or financial information.
- Review credit
card and bank account statements as soon as you receive them to determine
whether there are any unauthorized charges.
- Use anti-virus
software and keep it up to date.
- Your operating
system (like Windows or Linux) may offer free software “patches”
to close holes in the system that hackers or phishers could exploit.
- Be cautious about
opening any attachment or downloading any files from emails you receive,
regardless of who sent them.
Report suspicious
activity to the FTC. If you get spam that is phishing for information,
forward it to spam@uce.gov. If you
believe you’ve been scammed, file your complaint at www.ftc.gov,
and then visit the FTC’s Identity Theft Web site at www.consumer.gov/idtheft to learn how to minimize your risk of damage from ID theft.
How InvisiMax is helping prevent users from getting these emails:
Our email server offers advanced features to identify undesirable spam
email, block virus infected mail and prevent abuse of our mail server
by spammers. These features can be individually configured by you when
you log into our Web Mail program on our Web site. Please call our Customer
Service Department for more information on how to configure your settings.
InvisiMax is also
helping with the Phishing issue through constant customer education
through our in-the-field technicians and sales people, papers like this
one, websites and list service educational e-mails.
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