Try this quiz to see how good you are at spotting a phishing attack!
What is a phishing attack?
A Phishing attack can be in the form of an official looking email, maybe directing you to an official looking website.
Phishing sites are often replicas of well known companies, and some of the site links may actually lead to the genuine site.
An obvious attack is an email asking for your bank details to help someone to get money out of another country, and for your services you would supposedly receive a commission.
A less obvious attack is an email that looks like it’s from your bank asking you to visit a web page and login to confirm your bank details. Or an email that appears to come from your IT department asking for your username and password.
How to spot a phishing attack
There are number of clues that may indicate an email or website is not genuine such as:
- a suspicious email address or website address
- a link to a genuine website which takes you somewhere else
- spelling or grammatical mistakes
- inappropriate use of capitals or exclamation marks
- formatting errors etc.
If you didn’t already, try the quiz to see how many phishing attacks you spot!
As you can see, phishing attacks can be sophisticated and difficult to spot. You should refuse to disclose confidential information until you have checked to your own satisfaction that the request is justified and legitimate. You could do this by contacting the person or organisation in question using an address or telephone number that you know to be genuine.
Need help?
datamills is here to help with your IT security.
If you need further advice about a questionable email or website, give us a call on 0114 287 0510 or email us on info@datamills.co.uk
To make sure your staff are aware of these issues, and wouldn’t accidentally put your business at risk, have a look at our staff training demo, and get in touch if you’d like to know more.