Phishing stands for Password Harvesting Fishing.
Phishing involves mass-mailing messages that seem to come from banking entities or online stores in order to trick users into revealing confidential data such as passwords, credit card numbers, etc.
In order to do this, these messages usually include a link that takes the user to a fake website, making users believe they are interacting with a trustworthy website.
As a result, the user enters the information requested, which finally ends up in the hands of the fraudster.
Recommendations to protect yourself against phishing
- Do not automatically reply to any email message that asks for your personal or financial information. First of all, contact the entity that has supposedly sent the messages.
- If you are going to access a website that requests personal details, type the URL directly in the address bar of your browser.
- Make sure that the website in which you are entering personal data is encrypted. You can do this by checking if a closed padlock icon appears at the bottom of the browser window.
- Regularly check your bank accounts and credit cards.
- Don’t forget the banks will never ask you for confidential information through non-secure channels such as email.