What is Phishing and is a Filter Necessary?

Knowing what phishing is and if you need a filter will help you to avoid getting caught out by the fraudsters that are involved in this unethical online behaviour. This is one of those types of scams on the Internet whereby criminals will attempt to obtain somebody’s personal information or banking details. They then try to use your details to process transactions from your bank account or accounts. There are a few ways to avoid becoming a victim and avoiding being tricked by criminals involved in scams such as these.

The major banks in South Africa are fully aware of what phishing is, how it works and how these criminals operate. FNB, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank and others will have fraud teams and investigators that can be contacted if you feel you are being targeted by one of these online scammers. Keep in mind that NONE of the reputable banks or financial institutions in South Africa will ever ask you to update personal information such as PIN numbers or passwords via an email or a telephone call.

Follow a few simple rules and you can be sure that you will never fall prey to one of these types of Internet based scams at some stage. Never access your online banking via a text link in an email, type the URL into your address bar or save it as one of your Favourites and access it from there. Do not respond or reply to any email asking you fro personal information even if the mail threatens to close or suspend your account if you do not respond. Never participate in so called surveys that also ask for personal details or reply to any email that requests you confirm, refresh or verify your account, credit card or address information.

There are kinds of filters available to help people identify this kind of spam and scam attempts but this is not necessary to install if you just follow the few rules above and use your common sense. If a certain email looks legitimate then give your bank or financial institute a call or go and speak to them if you can with a printed copy of the mail. There are so many attempts at this kind of thing by many criminals online on a daily basis but if you simply exercise a little common sense and be very careful which emails you are replying and responding to you should know and recognise what a phishing email is the moment you receive one.