{"id":841,"date":"2017-05-29T23:23:43","date_gmt":"2017-05-29T22:23:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/owltech.co.uk\/?p=841"},"modified":"2017-05-29T23:23:43","modified_gmt":"2017-05-29T22:23:43","slug":"watch-out-watch-out-phishermen-are-about-still","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/?p=841","title":{"rendered":"Watch out ! Watch out ! Phishermen are about….still !"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hi all, for those of you that don’t know, Phishing is a practice that potential scammers\/fraudsters carry out to dupe you into giving out your bank\/card details. \u00a0It’s been widely published and still it happens.<\/p>\n

Officially – “Phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.”<\/p>\n

Here’s a real life example….<\/p>\n

I have just received an e-mail allegedly from Virginmedia – see image below. \u00a0Note the red circle – its not from Virginmedia, just some criminals trying to convince me to hand over my personal details.<\/p>\n

Now, i am really careful (as you would expect, given what I do for a living!!) but I was nearly fooled. This email came through to my @ntlworld.com account which is part of Virginmedia and it arrived at about the time of the month that I receive a legitimate e-mail saying my bill is ready for review.<\/p>\n

I picked up the strange sender email address and switched to secure\u00a0test\u00a0PC<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0in my workshop, with no onward access to my home or work network or to any sensitive information\u00a0etc. (so don’t try this at home folks), I clicked the link – which didn’t take me to Virginmedia.net but a completely different website where I was asked for my username and password – it was a very convincing facsimile of the Virginmedia login page. \u00a0I duly entered a username and password – not my own of course !! and was thanked and then taken to a page where I was asked for my full name, address, date of birth, payment card (including CVV) and bank details. \u00a0Again I duly entered all my “non” details and was thanked and told my account would be updated accordingly. Needless to say, on this occasion, these people will have received a random selection of numbers and swearwords but…………<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

If I had been anyone else, I would have just given these scumbags my Virgin username, password, bank, card and other personal details allowing them to steal my identity and rob me.<\/p>\n

I have also had a similar e-mail from Apple recently as well.<\/p>\n

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There are a few measures below you can take to ensure you are not duped.<\/p>\n

First and foremost, make sure you have good, up to date AntiVirus, Firewall and Malware protection. \u00a0I can recommend these – just click here to e-mail me<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Slow Down ! \u00a0Take a second to double check the sender e-mail address before you open the email and interact with it – it should always be, for example, @virginmedia.co,uk from Virginmedia and @bt.com for BT etc. etc.<\/p>\n

If you have multiple e-mail accounts bear in mind what account you have linked to what service – e.g. I received a recent phishing e-mail allegedly from Apple on my Owltech e-mail account when all my apple dealings are linked to another e-mail address.<\/p>\n

If you receive any suspect e-mails from known companies that you deal with on a regular basis, go to their website and search for “scam” or “phishing” – they will have a department that deals with these sort of emails – it is usually a “security@” or “phishing@” e-mail address for you to froward the suspect e-mail to.<\/p>\n

Don’t, repeat don’t<\/strong> <\/span>enter ANY details onto a form after following an e-mail link unless you are 100% sure it is safe and legitimate.<\/p>\n

Finally, if in doubt…..Keep Calm and Contact the Owl<\/a><\/p>\n

Stay safe everyone<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hi all, for those of you that don’t know, Phishing is a practice that potential scammers\/fraudsters carry out to dupe you into giving out your bank\/card details. \u00a0It’s been widely published and still it happens. Officially – “Phishing is the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,17,21,26,28,31,37],"tags":[53,57,66,68,79,86,89,96,99,101,108],"class_list":["post-841","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antivirus","category-internet-security","category-malware","category-phishing","category-ransomware","category-security","category-viruses","tag-computing","tag-cybercrime","tag-email","tag-fraud","tag-mail","tag-password","tag-phishing","tag-real-life-example","tag-scammers","tag-secure-testing","tag-spamming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/argon.owltech.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}