You sit down and open up your email: prepared to read, respond, and compile the work for the upcoming week. As you scrolled through the ones marked important, you noticed an email from what seems to be your boss.
He’s asking for a favor to be done out of the blue 🤷🏽♀️.
You didn’t check the address of the email. I mean, in reality, no one typically does. So why is this a problem? Later that day, the emailer asks for your phone number to be verified.
Weird 🤔.
You go along with your day in the mindset of getting the task completed. You still have not checked that email address. The day you are going to complete the favor, you decide to call your boss just to verify everything, but he sounds confused 😥.
“I didn’t send that email and don’t need verification from your phone number. What’s going on?”
You pause, and then your eyes widen in realization 😲 : you had taken the bait and nearly got caught by a phisher.
No, not a fisher, but a phisher. A person, or group of people, who use fake email addresses to get information, money, or potentially track you. So how could this situation be prevented?
Well, think back to the email itself: did you check who was sending the email? This is the first place you should look if the contents of the email itself look off. Verifying who you think the sender is if you are not sure, is also important so you know for sure what you are getting into and sending back.
In 2022 alone, according to Forbes, over 300,000 people have fallen victim to phishing. Using the techniques mentioned above will help you to not become a number of that statistic.
To check out more on what phishing is and how to prevent it, take a look here.
online safety is so important. thank you for sharing!