As we showed you in the October’s Board Brief, Phishing Schemes are deceptive, yet detectible if you STOP, LOOK & THINK before you CLICK. This Board Brief shows you what a Phishing email looks like after you have blocked it and it is sent to your Junk or Quarantine folder.

If you are not familiar with the term, PHISHING it is the use of an email sent to a lists of email addresses enticing recipients to click on an attached file or a web link. If you click on that file, it could launch a virus, imbed tracking (spy) software or launch ransomware.

Let's take a look at a Phishing email after you have CORRECTLY blocked the email using your email application. There are several things to notice, but your work of removing this destructive email is not done.

Notice the email address has nothing to do with Quicken Loans nor does it match the sender title. The date field says NONE (i.e. no date). The file Icons (seen when the email hit your InBox) are now converted to names that expose them as links (which are the links to Malware or a Virus).

IMPORTANT: The FILE NAMES will either launch MALWARE or a VIRUS to your computer if clicked.

MALWARE are things like tracking software that can detect your keystrokes, particularly login and passwords, launch ransomware which locks your computer until you pay the crooks to “unlock” it or installs software that allows the crooks to control your computer.

A computer VIRUS corrupts your computer, destroying your operating system &/or destroying your files (photos, documents, email records, etc.).

Our Advice
Phishing remains one of the biggest risks of using email. Learn to recognize phishing attempts. Never open an attachment or click on a link in any suspicious messages. Your email manager like Gmail, Outlook, MS-Mail, iOS Mail or other mail services have the ability to block email by email address. When you suspect a phishing email, block it so your email manager will recognize it and move it to the Junk, Quarantine or delete folder.

Empty the emails in your junk or quarantine folder immediately and get into the habit of emptying it daily.