How to Recognize and Avoid Phishing Attacks
Learn to identify phishing emails, websites, and messages to protect your accounts and data.
Phishing attacks remain one of the most effective methods cybercriminals use to steal credentials, financial information, and personal data. Understanding how phishing works is essential for protecting yourself online.
What Is Phishing?
Phishing is a social engineering attack where criminals impersonate legitimate organizations to trick you into revealing sensitive information. These attacks typically arrive via email but can also come through text messages (smishing), phone calls (vishing), or social media.
Common Types of Phishing
Email Phishing
Mass emails sent to thousands of recipients, pretending to be from banks, tech companies, or government agencies. They typically create urgency with messages like “Your account has been suspended” or “Unusual activity detected.”
Spear Phishing
Targeted attacks that use personal information about you to craft convincing messages. An attacker might reference your company, colleagues, or recent activities to build trust.
Clone Phishing
An attacker copies a legitimate email you previously received but replaces links or attachments with malicious ones. Since the email looks identical to one you trusted before, it is harder to detect.
Red Flags to Watch For
Urgency and Fear
Legitimate organizations rarely demand immediate action or threaten consequences. Messages creating panic are often phishing attempts.
Suspicious Sender Addresses
Check the actual email address, not just the display name. Phishing emails often use addresses that look similar to legitimate ones but with slight misspellings or extra characters.
Unusual Links
Hover over links before clicking to see the actual URL. Phishing links often use misspelled domains, long URLs with the real domain buried deep inside, or URL shorteners.
Grammar and Formatting
While phishing emails have gotten more sophisticated, many still contain grammar errors, awkward formatting, or inconsistent branding.
Protection Strategies
Use strong unique passwords for every account so that a single compromised credential does not affect all your accounts. Enable two-factor authentication on all important accounts. Use a password manager to avoid entering credentials on fake sites since the manager will not auto-fill on phishing domains. When in doubt, navigate directly to the website by typing the URL rather than clicking a link.
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