I asked for your advice on how to fight phishing scams. Here’s some great advice from our readers:
G. Lamar said:
One thing I learned while dealing with these fake PayPal messages is that a legitimate PayPal email will address you by NAME… and not just “customer”.
That’s the first dead giveaway for me that this is yet another phishing attempt.
Great advice! Also remember that legitimate emails don’t need your account information. They already know who you are.
Michael offers this advice:
It just never hurts anyone to go over these Phishing Scams.
Even I after seeing all the Scam Emails possible, will Bite when I see that a Service (especially a Financial one) will be closed Due to (whatever reason) the Email says.
I pause from the initial Panic, Look at the Email once more CAREFULLY.
A. Look for Common Misspelling of any words to determine its validity. Like these for example;
absence – absense, absance
category – catagory
foreign – foriegn …….etc.
B. Think about the Company itself & Determine why they would Email this to Me in the First place, especially if it has a Misspellings between the American & English English (better said American & European) versions of spelling certain words, e.g. calendar – calendar.
C. Copy & Paste the Original Email received & send it to Phishing Scams for that particular Company;, e.g. eBay, Financial Institutions, PayPal, QVC, Xoom…
D. Ignore the Phishing Scam & Report it as SPAM.
Here’s a late comment: I have all my regular business login links as favorites. When I get an email from them, I don’t click on the email link but use instead the favorite link. On the very rare occasion that it looks like that won’t work, I contact the sender another way to determine if the link is valid.