Don’t be a Phish!
By Mike Hillyer | Related entries in UncategorizedReally good advice at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity today:
What if someone calls you and asks you to verify information? If it’s Bank of America (and you actually have a BoA account, which I don’t), then say thank you, hang up, and then call them back. Look on the back of your Bank of America card and call them. If anyone ever asks you for information, call them back and go through the official channels if you’re seriously concerned. 99.999% of the time it will be a scam. Don’t become a statistics!
http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/beware-phishing-schemes.html
Sure it seems like common sense, but some people just don’t get it. Folks, these companies will not email you asking you to click links and enter personal information. If they ever do, open a browser and enter their site name directly, NEVER click on a link in an email and enter personal information, you are just asking for trouble. Odds are 99.9999% it’s someone phishing, or looking for suckers on the internet.
And while you are at it, get a paper shredder, the good kind that make confetti, not the kind that make strings of paper. I don’t have one so I take liberties with my parent’s fireplace for all old credit card statements and other sensitive documents that I don’t store.
This entry was posted on Friday, April 8th, 2005 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
April 8th, 2005 at 10:28 am
Alright, I have to advertise myself a little here. I recently wrote an article entitled Understanding Internet Security, aimed at educating people on the basic terms they need to know and the basic steps they need to follow. The kinds of things I tell my non-technical friends every time I go over to clean up their computers.
You’d be surprised how many people don’t know about this kind of thing, even supposedly computer-savvy individuals.
April 8th, 2005 at 12:05 pm
Sadly I would not be suprised
Thanks for the info link.
April 8th, 2005 at 2:10 pm
PayPal DOES email you asking you to click links and such. Which pisses me off to no end.
April 8th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
I should also note that an unnamed Canadian bank called me asking me to do just that. The person who called was unintelligible. He was in the anti-fraud department. He said he’d freeze my account if I called back.
I informed him it was impossible for me to tell from his phone call that he was legit, so I called them back.
I got transferred to the department. Asked to speak to someone else. Apparently I couldn’t. My account was locked by this guy and he was the only guy who could unfreeze it. After multiple voicemails, I went to customer service who straightened it out.
All of this to say, don’t think banks will be smart about this. Sometimes they’re idiots, like in many things.
Calling someone to verify their information is just about the worst kind of tactic I can imagine.
April 8th, 2005 at 3:47 pm
I was recently called on my cell phone supposedly from a company claiming to be my creditor. It was a card I had and when I explained that I was comfortable making a payment on a call I didn’t initiate the phone attendent became irate, literally berated me and said they were putting a note on my account. Ironically, I called supposed account and apparently had missed a payment due to a paperwork error! I’m still 100% glad I didn’t take care of it with that jerk - he was unreasonable and I reported his behavior. You can ALWAYS call your card company. NEVER, EVER, give any information to anyone who calls you about any account!
November 8th, 2005 at 5:08 pm
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