To begin with, a person must know what phishing really is. Phishing is defined as a cybercrime in which victims are basically contacted via telephone, email or text message by a person who is posing as a genuine establishment for the purpose of enticing the individuals into giving away sensitive data like passwords, personally distinguishable information, as well as credit card and banking detail. They then use such confidential information to get into various important accounts and this can also end up in identity theft or financial loss.
How Phishing Works?
Phishing attacks usually depend on social networking methods applied to any form of electronic communication techniques such as via email or direct messages sent across social networks, text messages as well as other instant messaging approaches.
Phishers can also make use of social engineering as well as other public sources of data and social media networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter so as to gather any background information regarding the target’s work and personal history, interests and activities.
Pre-phishing attack inspection can often uncover job titles, names and email addresses of the possible victims and even the information about their fellow colleagues as well as the names of chief employees in their establishments. Later, this information may be used to create a convincing email. Targeted attacks like those that are acted by advanced persistent threat (APT) groups usually start with a specific phishing email that contains a malevolent link or an attachment.
How to Prevent Phishing?
Phishing defense basically starts with teaching users how to recognize phishing messages. However, there are other strategies which can reduce efficacious attacks.
To start with, gateway email filters are able to trap mass-targeted phishing emails thereby reducing the number of phishing emails which reach inboxes.
There are various different means over the internet which offer assistance in preventing phishing. The Anti-Phishing Working Group Inc. as well as the federal government’s OnGuardOnline.gov website both can provide guidance on how to recognize, prevent and report phishing attacks. There are many interactive security awareness training aids, for instance the PhishMe, Wombat Security Technologies’ Anti-Phishing Training Suite which can actually assist in educating employees on how to evade phishing cons, whereas the websites such as MillerSmiles and FraudWatch International circulate the newest phishing email subject lines which are spreading over the internet.
Additionally, the ZoneAlarm Anti-Phishing defends your personal information from any kind of a phishing attack while browsing on the internet and it can protect your private information from wicked websites and hackers. The ZoneAlarm Anti-Phishing Chrome extension can easily scan all the websites before you even insert your confidential information and it can also alert the user whether the website is a safe one or a phishing attempt.
Bottom-line:
Even though hackers are very common today all over the internet networks and they’re continually coming up with various new methods, there are still however some things which users can do so as to protect themselves and their organization as mentioned above. Happy surfing!
