How To Prevent Phishing Attacks On Computer & Blogsites

Here in this post, you will get to know how to prevent phishing attacks on a computer system, how to protect your blog site from hackers, Phone Devices, Documents/files, online and social media accounts and lots more

What is Phishing?

Phishing is a type of online scam where criminals send an email that appears to be from a legitimate company and ask you to provide sensitive information. This is usually done by including a link that will appear to take you to the company’s website to fill in your information – but the website is a clever fake and the information you provide goes straight to the crooks behind the scam.

However, with the rapid increase in popularity of social media networks and smartphones, the various phishing attacks have started to expand widely. 

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The most common phishing attack has to do with sending unsolicited or spam email messages to an end-user, this email will usually contain a link to another website (such as PayPal or Facebook), and this becomes harmful to a user when the user clicks on the link, unknown to him/her they will be taken to an unknown site, where they will be asked to input their confidential/personal details.

Other forms of phishing attacks are as follows

• SMS asking you to submit confidential information. 

• Hackers send private messages to users on Facebook that contain a link to a counterfeit Facebook site.

• Sending bugs to your blog site

• Sending phishing links to your email address

• Accessing blog sites with (HTTP) using a DDoS attack

• Hackers sending private messages to users on Facebook that contain a link to a counterfeit Facebook site    

• Sending bugs to your blog site

• Sending phishing links to your email address

• Accessing blog sites with (HTTP) using a DDoS attack

How To Prevent Phishing Attacks

Below are 10 of the most effective ways how to prevent phishing attacks

1. Learn How to Identify Phishing Emails

There are a number of qualities that if one is aware of; one can use to identify such emails. These are the following:

• The email will ask you to click on a link to go through to an official website. In this case; most companies, especially those that retain sensitive data, will ask you to put the URL into the address box manually so as to avoid such an attack.

•  The email will make a claim that your membership or access to a particular service has expired; moreover, you do not have an account with that particular service.

• The email address of the sender normally comes with an abnormal and unusual mix of characters and numbers in it.

2. Try to Minimize Link Clicking

Actually, there’s nothing wrong with you when you click on links on sites that you know and trust. However, clicking on links found in instant messages and unsolicited or spam email messages may not always be the best idea to follow.

The most common majority of phishing attacks come through hyperlinks, therefore, it is important you are cognizant of everything you click on. Try hovering over links before clicking on them, by so doing you can make sure it leads to where it’s supposed to.

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3. Only Send Personal Information Over The Phone or on Secure Websites

When attempting to purchase a product/goods or access a service over the internet, always look for a sign that the website is secure, such as the “HTTPS:”, where “s” standards for “secure”, rather than the typical “HTTP:” websites. Having this in mind helps to curb away from the immense rate of getting your confidential details phished.

Also, you should also be aware of the many phone phishing scams and roots out there. Never disclose any personal information over the phone, unless you were the one that originates or starts the phone call. You should also be doubly cautious and extremely timid when asked to phone a particular number in order to update your account details.

4. Regularly Check Your Online Accounts

Obviously, with the vast popularity and growth of technology, most users have engaged in online activities making them occupy so many online accounts like social media and others. Nevertheless, you can keep safe of your online accounts by checking them regularly.

If you haven’t visited an old account in a while, it’s entirely possible that someone may have accessed it and could be doing all kinds of nasty things on it. This is the more important reason you have to regularly check all your accounts and also get into the habit of regularly changing your passwords as the case may be.

5. Be Wary Of Pop-Ups

Pop-ups are the sudden appearance kinds of stuff in form of texts or graphics on your device screen, normally masque as legitimate components of the website you are on. However, in many instances, these pop-ups are in fact phishing scams. Most internet browsers have built-in pop-up blockers, while others allow you to determine when to allow and when to disallow pop-ups.

If one of these pop-ups happens to get through the pop-up blocker, it’s very important that you click on the “X” (close button) in the upper corner of the pop-up or the applet window, as opposed to clicking on any buttons within the pop-up ad itself. 

6. Using Internet Security Software

There are hundreds and thousands of reasons why you want internet security software to be running on your computer device. Many of these security application software have special signatures which are designed to protect and prevent your computer from phishing scams and the like. Just make sure you are regularly updating it.

New definitions and terms are always being added to these applications, as hackers are constantly thinking up new ways of infiltrating your system so as to penetrate and get your details phished.

7. Watch Out For Unsolicited Emails

Fraudulent and spam emails are typically general in nature, unlike your authentic email, which will usually be accompanied by a reference number and some of your personal details. Still yet, the most common vast majority of phishing emails use Dear Sir/Madam, as opposed to the user’s real name or company name.

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8. Be Careful When Opening and Downloading Files in Emails

Notwithstanding; Most users tend to open and download any files or attachments in their mailbox prior to knowing and engaging with the request in due time. Unfortunately, it is so common for a user’s computer to be infected with a virus, Trojan, or worm, the moment they open and download an attachment from a solicited or unsolicited email.

If you do decide to open an attachment in an email, make sure you have your security application software enabled, by that way, if it is a virus, it will be caught and quarantined on time.

9. Create a Complex Email Address

Yes, this helps in most cases when you create a complex email address, it makes it substantially more difficult for hackers to auto-generate your email address using their hacking tools. Such actions have become the common ways hackers make use of in going about with email spamming and targeting for other malicious activity.

Actually, you want the email to be complex and you still want it to be something that you can easily remember. Still yet, you want to combine numbers and letters together, you could also use numbers as a substitute for certain letters, such as the following example h3llo@site-mail.com.

However; one can also get a custom email address ending with @yoursitename.com from your domain company or use some online application platforms like google tools, the Zoho app and others.

Address Yes this helps in most cases when you create a complex email address, it makes it substantially more difficult for hackers to auto-generate your email address using their hacking tools. Such actions have become the common ways hackers make use of in going about with email spamming and targeting for other malicious activity.

Actually, you want the email to be complex and you still want it to be something that you can easily remember. Still yet, if you want to combine numbers and letters together, you could also use numbers as a substitute for certain letters, such as the following example h3llo@site-mail.com. However; one can also get a custom email address ending with @yoursitename.com from your domain company or use some online application platforms like google tools, the Zoho app and others.

10. Never Fill Your Personal Details into a Pop-Up

I have already written about the various pitfalls and dangers of clicking on pop-ups. With that being said, just know that not every pop-up is a potential phishing scam; many of them are pretty legitimate. Therefore, you should never part with your personal and confidential details when dealing with a pop-up as getting a better apprehension between a legitimate and illegitimate one can be quite difficult.

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Conclusion: How To Prevent Phishing Attacks On Computer And Blogsites

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