If you have been a technology consumer for the better part of the last decade, then you may have read or heard about countless warnings from different services, companies, and news outlets more recently about the term “phishing” and how to not become a victim of phishing scams.


What is phishing?

Phishing is a form of cyber attack that consists of fraudulent attempts at stealing a person’s information (E.g. Email/username and passwords, financial details, personal accounts, and other sensitive data). Cyber criminals disguise these fraudulent emails and messages as legitimate communications from different companies that you may or may not have registered an account with in hopes of having non-tech savvy and/or inexperienced users “take the bait”. Their main goal is to deceive a user, such as yourself, into falsely believing that an important matter in the phishing email (Which is simply not true) requires your utmost attention and that urgent actions need to be taken. Once you click on the link(s) that is provided in the phishing email and enter your credentials into whatever fields provided to you by the cyber criminals and submit them, your email/username and password is most likely compromised.

If you are a user that frequently checks their email, then you would most likely have received a phishing email. And whether you have previously opened up a phishing email and fallen victim to the scam, or glanced at the email and did not take any action because you have been up-to-date on your cyber security awareness, you would know just how believable these phishing emails actually look. Unfortunately, successful phishing scams can end up with an innocent user becoming a victim of identity theft. Learn more about how you can protect yourself in Learning Module: Protecting Yourself from Identity Theft.


Sources:
https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/how-recognize-and-avoid-phishing-scams
https://retruster.com/blog/2019-phishing-and-email-fraud-statistics.html