Phishing (Computer Related Fraud)
Have You Heard of Phishing?
This is when a scam artist tries to gain access to your personal data (such as passwords, usernames, credit card information, etc.) by acting as a legitimate business or organization that you may deal with electronically.
What you need to know about Phishing:
- Web pages are created so they look just like a legitimate website, but they are not.
- An e-mail or popup will ask you to update or verify your personal data, usually within a specific amount of time. They may ask for financial data or personal details, which is then used to open new accounts.
How to protect yourself against Phishing?
- Watch out for e-mails with links, attachments, or popups that state an urgent reply is needed or your account will be deleted, closed, etc.
- Be careful of e-mails that just offer a general greeting vs. identifying you by name.
- Fraudulent e-mails/popups often have typos or grammatical errors.
- Call the business or organization to see if they sent you the e-mail. Call their published number not the number included in the e-mail. FSB would never ask for personal information via e-mail.
