What is Phishing? How to Avoid It

Phishing is an attempt to harm. So, have you ever heard or known the term phishing? Harmful tactics must be familiar in the digital world. Actions that are classified as crimes or cyber-attacks will certainly have a serious impact on their victims. For those of you who are familiar with this term, have you ever experienced it? If you have been and are still confused about how to avoid this kind of attack again, let’s take a look at the discussion about phishing in depth!

Explanation About Phishing
Kinds of Phishing
Phishing Characteristics
So, how to avoid it?
Conclusion

Explanation About Phishing

Phishing refers to an act of cybercrime involving a perpetrator, where the perpetrator disguises himself to look like a person or comes from a trusted organization. In short, phishing can also be referred to as a cybercrime that aims to deceive to get important data such as passwords from an account.

Along with technological advances, digital crimes such as phishing are increasingly spreading their wings. Not only that, but now, the tactics used to commit fraud are increasingly sophisticated. Now, many people can easily create fake accounts using other identities.

This one scam is rife in electronic mail or email. The perpetrator will create an email account that looks like a trusted account to spread a malicious link to your device. It can also contain files or files that can be harmful.

They use fake accounts as bait to attract their victims. Give words that can convince you. If you are lulled by the game strategy of a phishing agent, you will be willing to take any action that provides open access to the perpetrator’s device, account, personal information, and other important personal data.

Kinds of Phishing

In addition to acting via email, this one cyber attack can also be carried out on other digital media such as social media, websites, and others. In the following, we will present to you the various types of phishing along with a brief description of them.

1. Phishing Emails

Most of the fraudulent actions carried out by scammers are carried out through email media. Phishing using electronic mail has become the most basic tactic and is the choice of many perpetrators. In this type of experiment, the perpetrator will use a fake account that resembles an official and trusted account to send emails containing commands such as updating personal information, verifying accounts, and changing passwords.

2. Mobile Phishing

In mobile phishing, the form of attack can be in the form of an SMS, voice message, or message using other applications. Not much different from phishing via email that includes a notification message in the form of a command, this type of phishing is also a message where there is a notification that the account has expired or is being compromised by someone else. Don’t forget to include certain links that contain dangerous malware.

3. Voice Phishing

This attack tactic in the form of voice messages or what is often called vishing will take advantage of features related to voice delivery or directly via calls. Similar to the written form, the content of the message conveyed by the perpetrator is in the form of strong words and seems to be urging the victims to agree to visit a certain site or take an action on a bank account.

4. Website Phishing

For this type, the perpetrator usually creates a fake website which again is almost like the original official website where the site usually gets a lot of visitors. The domain for this fake site is also different from the domain for the sites in general. Users will be made to believe that they are visiting a genuine site. Even worse, they will be willing to reveal their identity which could be the beginning of identity theft.

Phishing Characteristics

So, how do you tell the difference between a genuine official message and a phishing message? You don’t need to worry, because phishing has its identifiable characteristics. You can use this to know the basics so that you stay alert for phishing threats.

1. Tendency to threats and pressure

It is not uncommon to talk about the characteristics of this one phishing. Threats and pressure to do something that will have a negative impact will be intensively carried out by the perpetrators of this cybercrime. This is done with the hope that they can bring the recipients of the message into a state of panic and haste so that they can make less mature decisions at any time.

2. Message pattern

You can identify phishing immediately by indicating that the message has an inappropriate or inappropriate pattern or use of language. Message patterns from perpetrators of this type of cyber threat usually seem chaotic. Errors in spelling and grammar are also an indication of a phishing message. Because, as we all know, professional companies must have a good understanding of how to use language and have minimal spelling mistakes.

3. Suspicious requests

Have you ever received an email or message containing an order, where the order requires you to take action with a high level of negative consequences? If so, then most likely the message is a phishing message.

4. Inconsistent web address

Another feature of phishing messages that can also be easily recognized is the consistency of the web address. You can do this identification by looking at the email address, domain name, or link listed in the message sent. If indeed there is a mismatch between the domain name and email address, you should immediately ignore the message.

So, how to avoid it?

The question of how to avoid this one cybercrime must be crossing your mind. Don’t worry because we will discuss some anticipatory methods that you can apply to avoid phishing crimes. Here are the ways!

1. Implementing Dual Authentication

Multiple authentications can at least provide extra protection for you against threats from this one tactic, namely by granting access that will only be approved if the user meets the authentication requirements.

2. Using Anti-Virus Support

Apart from dual authentication, you should also tighten security by implementing anti-virus on your device. Make sure that the anti-virus can detect any danger or threat automatically.

3. Create a Strong Password

Updates to account information regularly can also improve security and provide additional protection against phishing.

4. Equip yourself with Phishing Knowledge

This can help you, at least to be able to distinguish or identify which messages are genuine from trusted institutions that are just phishing messages.

5. Monitor Digital Activity Periodically

This step can also help you minimize the risk of being tricked or trapped by phishing tactics. Apart from ensuring that they are well informed about phishing, you should also ensure that they don’t access or fall prey to this one tactic when using enterprise tools.

Conclusion

Phishing is a cybercrime that should be avoided. Why is that? Because the impact that you have when you are caught in the trick of this tactic is not trivial. Theft of identity, personal data, confidential data, and even accounts can happen when you are too rash to act. Make sure you have a good understanding of this one crime so you can always be alert and avoid it.