Phishing

Phishing

Phishing is where an online criminal tries to get your personal information by contacting you online with a seemingly helpful message. It may be a message that says that there has been unusual activity on your eBay account or an email invoice that needs to be paid immediately.

A good way to stop phishing from hacking your device is to install an antivirus such as AVG or a firewall, but they are also more ways to avoid being a victim:

A lot of phishing emails include a link to a fake website that looks very similar to the official one.

A bank will NEVER send a email where you have to enter a password!

You can hover your cursor over a web the link BEFORE clicking it to see what the actual link is.

On mobile devices, hold the web link before clicking to see where it will really take you.

Try and spot any bad grammar or spelling in the email because official sites will always have good English, but people who are trying to get your information might not.

You might get an email from "PayPal" or another similar app that you can use to transfer money. The criminals will pretend to be the organisation and attempt to steal your account details so that they can take control of your account and illegally take money from it..

Another way of phishing is to have a website name the exact same as an official website. Be careful!

To be sure you are safe, check that the website has this at the top-

Top Tip

If you want to check the authenticity of the message that you have received.

• Do not follow the link but go to the official site.
• Log in to the account through your app or the official site. If there is an issue, you will be informed of it from the site's dashboard or message section.