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"Phishing: how to avoid taking the bait?"
with Christopher

What’s phishing? 

Phishing is a form of fraud mainly on the internet where internet hackers usurp a trustworthy organisation’s identity such as banks, insurance companies or institutions in order to extract sensitive information such as confidential data, credit card details and so on which they will wrongly use.

What does it look like? 

Phishing could take different forms: by phone, mail, text messaging, via chats...

We can receive an email from an organisation or shop asking us to click on a link to fill in all our information, IDs, credit card details and so on to get an illegitimate refund, for example.

We should bear in mind that either an institution, bank or most shops will never ask you for sensitive information such as your passwords or IDs. 

Most of the time, if someone asks you for these information be it by phone, email, message, chances are, it’s fraud.

What are the best practices to avoid taking the bait? 

Good question!

When in doubt, get in touch with the organisation immediately to make sure it isn’t fraud and if it turns out to be fraud, take the adequate measures such as blocking your card immediately for banks.

It’s also important to secure your own systems at home such as antivirus and firewall software to make sure you won’t get caught.

To resume, the most important is to remain vigilant when we ask you to share confidential and personal information.