What is Phishing?

Phishing is a strategy that clever computer hackers use to try to gain access to a person’s or businesses’ important or personal information. What they do is send out fake emails that seem legitimate, but often include an unsafe link or an attachment that downloads malicious software to steal that information.

The important thing is to know what to look for in order to keep yourself or your employees safe from any phishing attacks. If you do not know what to look out for, you or someone else are more likely to click on or download a wrong file that could compromise your device and data.

If you receive an email and you think it might have bad intentions, it is good to look at a few different things to see if you can identify the trustworthiness of it. Head over to the URL link and inspect it to see if it’s a real link before clicking the link. Most often hackers will make these look almost identical to a legit website URL. If something looks off, it’s best to not click through that link. 

Now have you heard of the term “whaling”? No this is not a clever fishing/phishing pun. Whaling is an actual term in the technology field for a certain type of phishing scam. What this does is it puts on a fake campaign or impersonates a high-level person like a CEO, in order for other high-level executives to be more likely to converse or reveal sensitive information.

Here are some of great ways to recognize phishing:

• Check the domain the email is from. Legitimate emails will come from private domains
• Spelling errors are a HUGE indication to whether an email is legit
• Any emails that come with attachments or link from a sender you do not recognize, its best to leave it alone
• The subject line or greeting of the email is very generic

Looking to get more educated or implement additional help when it comes to phishing attacks?

Thinline Technologies can offer our assistance with this and much more. We have an experienced team ready to help keep you or your business safe and thriving. Our mission is to provide reliable service to our clients whenever they may need technology solutions.