From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

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Recognizing a phishing attack email

Recognizing a phishing attack email

From the course: Help Yourself: Tech Tips Weekly

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Recognizing a phishing attack email

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- [Instructor] A phishing attack works because it looks like legitimate email, it claims to be from your bank, an online retailer, a shipping company, the government, or some other authority. The object is to get you to divulge account information, which is what the bad guys behind the phishing attack really want. The worst thing you can do with such an email is to open an attachment or visit a website. The attachment is usually a payload for malware, a virus that infects your computer. The link goes to a website that may look legitimate, but instead it's diverted to harvest your personal information. So how can you tell when such a message arrives? Your email program may alert you, it may flag the message as suspect or send it off to the Junk folder. The message itself is nonspecific. It doesn't use your name or uses your email address instead. It may even say Dear Customer, but it's not personal. Look for misspellings…

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