Beware the Phishers: How to keep your Data SAFE!

by Michael Sitver · May 28

We all know how to spot phishing scams…or do we. When a family member of mine texted me a link and said I could get a free iphone recently, I assumed their phone had been stolen by scammers. It turned out that they were just naive about phishing scams. Some people just don’t recognize them. Sometimes even I’m fooled for a second by a phishing scam I see via email, so I put together some tips to protect your data.

example Facebook phishing scam

Check the URL (i.e Google.com). If you get an email from “Facebook” and the email address it’s sent from is [email protected] or the link it takes you to is facebook.freemoney.com (just examples of what you might see) it’s a scam. Unless it says Facebook.com (or whatever site it claims to be) and nothing more in the address bar at the top of your browser, it’s fake.
Test it. When it prompts you to log in, enter fake login information. Have a little fun with it. I like to enter [email protected] with password abcdefg. If it doesn’t say your password is incorrect and brings you to any page, it’s fake. It may even direct you to a page on the real site, but if it asks you to login, and you log in with bogus info and it doesn’t question, it’s fake.
If it looks too good to be true, it is. This is foolproof. You’re not getting $100,000 from an African prince for wiring him money, and you’re not going to get a free iphone from apple for logging into “itunes”.
Send the link to us. Submit the link to us in our contact form and tell us it’s a scam. We’ll have a little fun spamming the thieves.