Online Fraud Email Safety ("Phishing")

Email fraud is on the rise and it is important to make sure you have taken all the precautions available to you, education is the best prevention available to us. "Phishing" (pronounced "fishing") refers to the use of email or web sites to fraudulently obtain personal and financial information. One method involves sending "spoof" emails which appear at first glance to be from legitimate, trustworthy companies.

Remember this one important fact:
NO LEGITIMATE FINANCIAL OR CREDIT INSTITUTION WOULD EVER ASK YOU TO DIVULGE PERSONAL INFORMATION IN AN EMAIL!

Check with your financial institution or credit institution you will find they never solicit you to divulge personal data by email invitation, so when you get that CLICK HERE TO VERIFY YOUR BANKING INFORMATION email, do not comply, instead open a new web browser window, go to your credit or financial institution's web site and you will find information to help you report phishing attempts.
Or you can simply delete the email, whatever you do NEVER EVER divulge personal information at the insistence of an email message.

Always stop to ask yourself about whether the alleged sender would send that type of email or ask for the type of information requested, and the answer is probably NOT!.

Spoofed Web sites

This is yet another form of phishing, using fake web sites to fraudulently obtain personal and financial information. End users are shown web sites that replicate the characteristics of legitimate web sites and it can be hard to tell the fakes from the real thing, but if you look at the address displayed in your web browsers' address bar you can soon sort the fakes from the real thing.