It was Friday, and Melissa was looking forward to the weekend. It had been a rough week and she just wanted to rejuvenate with a long weekend away from work. But, yes, she had work to do.
She began with her early morning email. She strolled through the email, mentally categorizing the email, and then putting the email in their appropriate places of importance before reading. But…one email caught her eye, she strolled back to the email and read the subject line carefully:
“Please Verify Your Paypal Account”.
She cursed under her breath, “Now what”, she said under her breath. She click on the email and read it thoroughly. The essense of the email suggested that someone was trying to get into her account, and they
wanted her to verify her information. She was busy, but she thought that she should take the time to resolve the issue to get her online work done before the weekend. She clicked on the link they provided, and entered her id and password.
But…..
When Melissa got into the website, she noticed that some of the items were not populated. No sweat, just refresh. It still didn’t work. And when she clicked on the calender to put in the date span-it didn’t work.
Frustrated, and knowing that she had to get her work done before the weekend, she clicks away. But then she remembered something that she had just read about phishing. Her stomach knotted up, as her mind wondered to the “What if possibility”.
Whenever she got that knot in her stomach, she knew she had to act. She got the link for Paypal from her stored links and contacted Paypal.
Her day was going from bad to worse, after talking to Paypal. To her dismay she had been hit with a phishing scam.
When you have been hit by a phishing scam you should act immediately. Melissa did some things wrong, and some things right.
Some of the things that she did right:
She contact Paypal immediately. Why is this important?
They can begin monitoring the account, kill any suspicious transactions from the time she contacted them, and change her password and user-id.
Some of the wrong things that Melissa did:
She clicked on link they provided in the email.
What should she have done?
Melissa should have looked up her stored link for Paypal first, and contacted Paypal to verify if there truly was an issue with her account. And no, do not cut and paste the link into your browser. It’s the link that redirects you to the phishing site.
Phishing affects credit cards, banking and other financial dealings. Be aware, phishing scams are growing and the fraudsters are trying to expand their opportunities to make money off you.
Ninja Proxy 