Tips on what to do with phishing emails?

Last Updated on 2 years by Touhid

Phishing email is an email scam which involves fraudulent email and vulnerable websites to steal your sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers, account data, addresses, and more. In this article, we will discuss some important tips on what to do with phishing emails.

A Phishing emails or sites might ask for the following information:

• Usernames and passwords
• Social Security numbers
• Bank account numbers
• PINs (Personal Identification Numbers)
• Credit card numbers
• Your mother’s maiden name
• Your birthday etc.

Tips on what to do with phishing emails

Phishing emails are appearing to you as legitimate such as messages from your bank, office or another trusted website. Here are the some important tips on what to do with phishing emails if you find yourself a victim by email phishing emails.

1. Change your Passwords

What to do with phishing emails? If you receive a phishing email with link and if you click on that link then you should change your passwords immediately.

By clicking on that type phishing email you are going to compromise your email and all accounts, including bank accounts and PIN numbers.

So, create a strong, standard and new password to protect from phishing emails.

Tips

To creating a strong and standard password you should use combine letters, numbers, special characters (minimum 10 characters in total) and change them on a regular basis.

For example: K$iuT&89%; is a strong and standard password.

2. Contact Credit Card Companies

Contact your Credit Card Companies as soon as possible and let them know your account was potentially compromised by phishing scammers. So they can further protect your credit card.

3. Delete suspicious email

When you will receive suspicious or phishing e-mail message which may contains a virus or malware script to redirect you to a vulnerable website to steal your information. So delete that suspicious email immediately or marked as a spam email.

Tips

• If you want to avoid phishing email, just delete any email that raises confusion.
• In addition to simply deleting the email, you can also mark it as spam, or as suspicious.

4. Scan your computer

Antivirus software is a program that helps how to prevent computer security threats such as hackers, viruses, worms, Trojan horses, and malware threats.

If you think you’ve infected your system with a virus or other types of malicious software then you should scan your system using the antivirus software.

Tips

You can install the following anti-virus software to protect from virus and malware and keep updated with latest version.

• • Bitdefender
  • Norton
  • Kaspersky
  • Panda
  • ESET
  • Avast
  • AVG

5. Don’t download email attachments

When you will receive a phishing e-mail message with an attachment file and the attachment may contain malware such as viruses, worms or spyware that may infect your system as soon as you download and open the software.

Tips

So, it is better don’t download and open that type of email attachments to prevent from cyber security threats.

6. Do not reply to Phishing Email

If you suspect that you’ve received a suspicious email, and the mail requesting to you reply with your personal information, then it is confirm that the mail is phishing email. In that case, you will never reply this type of email.

Tips

• If you think your incoming email is suspicious then you can direct phone call to sender to confirm as he sends the mail.

7. Never click email links 

A suspicious or phishing e-mail message may contain a URL link to redirect you to a vulnerable website and ask to provide your personal information such as usernames, passwords, credit card information, login credentials, and so more.

Tips

The URL links look like as legitimate link but if you check the link very carefully then you can see that the link is fraudulent link.

8. Update your Software

If your system is infected with a virus or other malware then you have to update your software such as from anti-virus software to computer operating systems. The main reason for updating the latest version software is to stay protected from security threats.

Old version software may have some vulnerability in source code and when a new version of software is released, the version usually includes fixes for those types of security vulnerabilities.

9. Up to date Operating system

It is strongly recommend that you update your operating system on a regular basis with the latest security patches. This will ensure that your system is up-to-date and free from viruses and other cyber threats.

Tips

• Open Windows Update by clicking the Start button > control panel > system and security > and then clicking Windows Update.
• In the left pane, click Check for updates
• If any updates are found, click Install updates.

Lear more about Best defense against Phishing.

Conclusion

Finally, the main target of phishing email is to redirect you a vulnerable website to steal your sensitive information such as passwords, credit card numbers, account data, addresses. In this post, we have discussed some important tips on what to do with phishing emails. Hope the article will be helpful for you.