Spotting a Phish

Gary North - February 24, 2018

I get phishing emails all the time. They want me to provide private information regarding my finances.

There are lots of ways to spot phishing attempts, but this one takes care of 80% of them. Check the domain name in the return address. It will probably be a .com address. It will not match the domain name of the outfit that supposedly sent you the email. Blip it immediately.

There are other tests. Here is a list of 10.

https://www.garynorth.com/snip/1314.htm

I got one this week from "American Express." It began: "Dear Valid Card Member." My name was missing. Phish.

There was a threat:

We would greatly appreciate your co-operation. We made some Important changes last year 2017 and an email was sent to you to Update your profile, but our records indicate that you did not follow up on update on your profile as requested by us.

This Update will affect your membership this month if not attended to in 5 working days.

This was the "act now!" component of the email. Phish.

There were two spelling errors: "To Continue to Update, we have already made form easy to fill out, using the sucure Htlm easy Step format." This was "sucure," not "secure." It was Htlm, not Html. Phish.

Also, why was "Step" capitalized? Phish.

Then there was this: I do not own an American Express card. Phish.

I did not click the attachment.