Beware Of Online Phishing Links: Here's How You Stay Vigilant & Learn To Foil Phishing Attacks

Our lives are too connected to the internet these days, be it browsing on Facebook or getting forwards on numerous WhatsApp groups.

However, this has also gone ahead and given cyber attackers more people to trouble. There are numerous ways cyber attackers choose to create trouble online, and one of the most common ways is through phishing.

What is phishing?

Phishing is the act of fooling a person and retrieving information from him through the acts of deception. Basically, it is a person, pretending to be someone to retrieve confidential or sensitive information from someone. Phishers commonly attack email users as well as users on Facebook through click-tempting links.

The links can take users to a fake login page, which would look almost identical to the real one and ask them to log-in with their credentials, however, the link wouldn¡¯t really grant access but record the login details to hack it later. This can not only include asking for log-in details but it can also act as payment gateways stealing credit card information, among other numerous applications.

Surprisingly, now they have also started using WhatsApp as one of their primary medium of attacking users. And since many people on WhatsApp in India aren¡¯t really aware of such attacks and they keep forwarding these unsafe links from one group to another, which gets more unaware people prone to attack.

If you¡¯re one of those who doesn't know how to identify and tackle phishing links we¡¯ve got a few tips to prepare you guys in-case you get attacked.

Spotting phishing attackers

The primary rule that needs to be followed before dealing with an unknown or even known source is ¡®Think before you click.¡¯ There are numerous methods to spot phishing attackers. And although phishing attackers are also known to be very dynamic in their so-called art of deception, there are a few key elements that can help you catch the culprits red-handed. Having attention to detail is of utmost importance.

1) Check the link or email ID

For example, you get a forward stating that ¡®Google makes two-step authentication compulsory¡¯ along with a link, when you click on it, actually see the link. In case of Google, the link should firstly have ¡®https¡¯ in the beginning.

Secondly, the link should have ¡®accounts.google.com¡¯ in its URL, and no other alphabets in between. It could have other characters after this and not in between this. If there are any other alphabets in existence, this means that the URL isn¡¯t from Google and it¡¯s not a safe link to be opened.

Similarly, in case of an email, imagine you get an email with a similar subject of ¡®Google makes two-step authentication compulsory¡¯. Here take a look at the email ID from where you¡¯ve received this notification. Make sure that the user ID ends with ¡®@google.com¡¯ and not some other user.

2) Scan the landing page

If, after looking at the link you feel everything is alright, don¡¯t trust it yet. After clicking on the link, check out the landing page. Let¡¯s take the same example of the same Google authentication. Once you¡¯ve clicked on the link look at the page where it is asking you to enter the credentials. The first thing to spot here will be the ¡®https¡¯ and the ¡®google.com¡¯ without any characters in between, in the URL.

The second thing to look for is the landing page itself. If it¡¯s a phishing landing page, the page won¡¯t look exactly like the original, the images won¡¯t be sharp and even here, look for what the site is asking for. If it is asking for sensitive information apart from just the email ID and password, the page cannot be trusted. This isn¡¯t something too hard to look out for. If you¡¯ve landed on a specific page numerous times, you yourself will be able to make out a fake website intuitively.

3) Check the grammar

In case of an email, you also need to look at the way the email reads. If the email has a bunch of grammatical errors, then it can be an email that cannot be trusted. Another thing that you need to see is that if the link is straight-away asking for sensitive information, then the email can be termed as a phishing email, as no service provider or brand will directly ask for sensitive information on email.

If you think you¡¯ve got the skills to identify phishing links and emails, try taking this quick quiz by Kaspersky Labs to test your skills. Good luck for being safe on the world wide web.