Worried about online safety? A few simple ways to avoid phishing scams

If you are losing sleep over how to protect your online assets, fret not, there is a simple checklist that can protect your online information. More often than not, netizens lose important personal and financial information due to unassuming activities such as clicking on a link or providing information on a pop-up window. 

While these activities might appear innocuous, they could be part of what is known as phishing. Phishing, as mentioned in a State Bank of India guideline, is a general term for emails, text messages or websites that are created and forwarded by fraudsters to unassuming customers. They appear to be real, which poses a serious problem. They also appear to be coming from trusted businesses, financial institutions and government agencies, but unbeknownst to the user, with an intent to collect sensitive information. 

SBI says that the best response to a phishing link, if you catch one, is to simply delete it. 

How it works

You might come across a fraudulent email that appears to be from a legitimate internet address. It might appear to invite you to click on a hyperlink, but once it is done, it will direct you to a fake website that appears similar to a genuine one. 

One way to distinguish a fake link is to note that these emails usually come with a promise of reward or compliance or warn of impending penalty on non-compliance. It might ask you to update your personal information such as passwords or bank account numbers etc. Once the customer updates the information and presses ‘submit’, he or she will get an error page. That is an indication of a phishing attempt. 

Here are a few simple steps to avoid a phishing scam as per SBI:

• Do not click on a link that comes from an unexpected source
• Do not provide your details on a page that comes as a pop-up window
• Do not disclose personal information or passwords through text messages
• Do not provide your password over the phone or unsolicited emails
• Always log in through the proper url
• Provide user, password only at the authenticated login page 
• Ensure that the url has ‘https://’ and not ‘http://’. The ‘s’ stands for ‘secured’ and that the page uses encryption 
• Look for the lock sign at the right bottom and the Verisign certificate
• Update your computer protection 
• Regularly check your bank, credit card statements
• Remember that banks will not ask you to verify your account information through email

Also read: Victim of identity theft? Here is how to rectify your credit score