Yesterday, I received a link from my inbox at Messenger. A link where I can win a shopping spree from Puregold. With my suspicion on the link that was sent to me, it was a scam. To make sure of it, I searched it and Puregold doesn't have any present promos for this year.
With my experiences, I've been fallen multiple times from it, and with my expertise in technology no wonder why a lot of us are getting tricked into this kind of scheme. In this article, I'll discuss how scam & phishing works, how you can protect and prevent yourselves against scammers in the digital and the outside world.
To define what a scam is, it is a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation. Another definition would be is to obtain. This means they will try to get something, it can be from anything from your personal information, bank accounts, security numbers, tax identification numbers, and they will use it to get your money.
Outside the digital world, there are numerous scams from investment, insurance, even in business, especially in the multi-level networking business, where they'll promise you once you give your down payment all of your earnings will be doubled, or even tripled, but it will turn out as a scam. I'm not saying that you'll need to invest your money by networking, or from any type of business, and it is given that we need to learn how to become financially literate. To make sure if this is legitimate, look for any certifications or accreditations. If it is certified by the government, then give it a go. If it is not, then you can report the organization from your local government ensuring they will shut down their operations and all personnel will be held accountable for their actions.
In the digital world, this is called phishing. The fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information . Just like scam, they'll be using this information to gain access to your accounts which will result in identity theft, hacking attempts to your account, or withdrawal/use of your money.
Just like the image above as an example, these types of links can be seen from the hacker's end once you type in all of your information on the form, but they cannot access any of your devices. Once you've clicked on submit, the hacker now has all of your personal information. To prevent this from happening and before clicking the link, search for any updates from their official website or any of their official social media profiles if they have current promos about it. If none, it is best to ignore that message, delete or move it to your spam folder.
Speaking of spam folder, what if? Someone sent you a message from your email address but the sender's email looks different? I guess I'll have to discuss this on some other time since phishing has a lot of different methods.
Sources:
Lead Image from https://www.it.miami.edu/about-umit/it-news/phishing/phishing-at-the-u/index.html
