Protecting Yourself From Phishing Emails is Actually Quite Easy

Phishing is a method employed by criminals to extract someone's personal and/or financial information from them.

The aim of a phishing attempt is to trick someone into revealing private information such as credit card details or passwords for their online bank accounts.

This practice has grown over exponentially over last few years.

The imposters send you emails that can lure you into entering your personal details somehow into the mails sent by them and once they get what they want, they will raise a toast and have a bash on your hard-earned money.

The laws and police have become very vigilant and tough to nail these kinds of fraudsters.

The preferred mode of Phishing is via sending fraudulent emails.

If you receive an email which says it is from your bank and that you need to verify your account details, or something similar from your credit card company, then you need to step back and consider whether it is genuine or not.

Reputed organizations like Amazon, eBay and banks never ask anyone for their password in their emails.

The links within phishing emails tend to link to sites which mimic the ones they are supposed to be.

If you land on a site that looks like your bank then be aware that it may not be secure - check the URL to see if it begins with 'https' and also look at the complete web address to see if it is a mispelling of your bank's real website address.

Another way of spotting that such an email and link is less than genuine is to simply read the mail - your bank would know your name and customer number whereas a phisher probably wouldn't.

If you want to keep yourself safe from phishing emails then you just need commonsense - read emails carefully and never click on links unless you are sure of where they will lead you.

However, installing pop up blockers and spam filters in your browser is yet another step you can follow.