Phishing is a preferred method of attack where phishers send emails which appear to be from an authoritative source, such as from PayPal, Helpdesk, Administrator or your bank. Usually the email warns you about your account status and asks you to reply, update, or confirm your account information. If you receive emails like that or those that threaten dire consequences if you don't respond, please click on the "Report spam" button in your inbox and forward the message to CSS IT Security at email@example.com.
The consequence of responding to these fraudulent emails can be serious. Once a phisher has your account information, they can steal your email account, steal information inside your email account, use your account to send spam and launch more phishing attacks.
Phishing emails may have spelling mistakes and use bad grammar, they may threaten that your account will be closed. They try to get you to respond and act quickly without thinking. Asking you to click on a link within a phishing email, is another common way that the phishers install malware on your computer that can steal your personal information. Wondering how to spot a phishing email? The CSO magazine editorial staff shared a phishing email example that teaches you how to recognize phishing email.
Click Click Phish is a phishing attack education game that shows common phishing tricks (If players register they will be emailed on a regular basis (e.g. every 3 months) to play again to stay sharp on the latest phishing attack tactics).
If you see messages in your sent folder that you didn't send, or there are logins from locations that you don't recognize, your email account might have been hacked. What To Do When Your Email Gets Hacked is a great article that will walk you step by step to get everything back in order.
Text message spam is target at your phone to steal personal information. It often promise you free gifts and offers to get username and password, credit card number of Social Security Number. Once your information is revealed, it can lead to unwanted charges on your bill, bad phone performance or identity theft. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) provides an article Text Message Spam to further discuss this threat. We encourage you to read the article and learn how to protect yourself against phishing scams and identity theft.