If you got the following email from your Bank: “Your password is about to expire, please go to your account and reset your password”, and a link to the website is provided. What will you do?
Will you click on the link to access your account, or will you go to the address line at the top of your browser and type in the url of your bank?
If you clicked on the link, you likely were the victim of a phishing scam. Phishing is when hackers send out emails pretending to be credible sources. They do this in order to trick you into giving them your username and password. Once they get that information they will now go to the real website and hey presto you have been hacked!!
Who would fall for that?? well alot of people. In the fast paced mobile world we live in, it is very easy to make this mistake
Look at the example below. Say you clicked on a link on a website and it took you to the screen below
It looks great right? Very credible. I can see the bank of america url at the top. It has the lock secure sign. Now if I was looking at this on small screen of my mobile phone I might miss something. Look at the next screenshot
As you can see that website is not actually bankofamerica.com, but bankofamerica.me….the part you saw was a pretty smart image of a real bankofamerica site. If you did not pay attention, you would just look at this site and enter your username and password information. This will then be sent over to the person who setup that website…….and when this happens my friend, you have just been phished!! 🙂
Stay secure my friends