Viruses, Ransomware & Phishing, Oh My! Part 3

Phishing attacks attempt to trick you into providing hackers or scammers with your information. This might be your passwords, bank details or personal information. A phishing attack often arrives in the form of an email with a clickable link. The email may look like a legitimate email from a friend or trusted company or it could look like a simple link to a shared file. Hackers can target someone directly and build a profile of information on them. By using information from a data leak and some personal information they can launch a phishing attack to get more information or directly access your accounts. Some phishing systems are multi-layered and advanced, gathering a hierarchy of logins that take advantage of services such as resetting your password through email to access more and more of your data.  

Many browsers will alert you to websites that are not secure and may be fraudulent and attempting to steal your information. By not opening unknown or suspicious looking emails and not clicking on unknown links or files you will be protecting yourself a great deal. Generally banks and financial institutes will not request your login or account details via an email. Also be sure to check if the website you are on is correct by checking the address bar. Some antivirus software will also check links and websites visited and can stop malicious software from opening.