Avoid Credit Fraud by Detecting Phishing Emails - By: Joey Vella

Email spam volume is a significant portion of the email distributed each day throughout the internet. These Spam mails are sent by marketers trying to promote products using your email address as a sales device but even more scary are people trying to defraud you of your money. These spammers send emails designed to trick you into entering key financial information and is growing in number each day.

These fraudulent emails are termed Phishing emails similar to catching a fish where you're looking for a bite, in this case entering financial account details. Identity fraud can ruin you financially and can take you many months/years to prove you were not responsible for the withdrawals and to try and recover the money stolen from you.

Legally your financial institution is not obliged to return any moneys to you as a victim of online fraud. Their terms and conditions usually state quite clearly that it is your responsibility to maintain the integrity of your username/account numbers as well as any password or pin numbers. So whilst online banking is very convenient the responsibility clearly sits with you in regards to security and privacy of your information.

These phishing emails are designed to collect your financial information and usually do so by copying the websites of your financial institution and pretending that you need to update your username, password, address etc. These sites are so convincing that it only takes a moments lapse in concentration to compromise your security and privacy. Your bank or financial institution would never ask you to update information via email. If you need to carry out a financial transaction do so by going directly to the website and not clicking on any email links.

How can you prevent being scammed by these phishing emails ? Firstly if the email looks poorly presented with bad spelling and grammar you can assume it is Spam and delete the email. If it is a clean professional looking email with company colors and logos there are a few simple ways to check if the email you received is real. Most email these days is delivered in HTML format which makes for a richer email with text and graphics.

Hover the mouse over one of the links and in the status bar of the browser or email client you should see the domain the link is really going to take you. If this is not the domain you expect it's Spam and delete the email. If it does match the correct domain complete a further check as follows. You should see a 'View Source' option somewhere in your email client or browser. Select that option and you will see the HTML code that constructs the email.

Look for the link and make sure the address in the 'href' tag is a legitimate domain for your financial institution e.g. href=http://www.yesthisismybank.com. Remember that emails from your financial institution that you should click on are generally marketing, sales or new product information emails. Make sure you have anti-virus and anti-spyware applications installed on your computer to make sure you do not have spyware or malware that could be recording your account numbers and passwords.

About the Author

Joey Vella is an IT consultant with more than 20 years of industry experience. Joey consultants to a number of companies including PCWinTools.com

Article Directory Source: http://www.articlerich.com/profile/Joey-Vella/67663

Additional Articles From - Home | Finance | Credit fraud