Debt Consolidation Credit Counseling In Phoenix

Have you ever received an email from a company that you do business with asking you to visit a website to update some personal information? You are asked to enter you login information and update some vital personal information. But, how can you be sure that you are at the website that you think you are, and not someplace that is looking to steal your information?

Criminals creating websites to look like a company or financial institution is becoming a very large problem. The sole purpose for these sites is to trick you into revealing your personal information. The combination of using email and websites to fool you into giving out personal information is called "phishing".

Because they look like the real thing, it is sometimes very hard to spot a phishing email. The problem is that once you click on a link in a phishing email, you go to a website that is there only to steal your personal information.

These phishing websites will look very similar, if not identical to the website of the actual company. You can usually tell that they are not the real deal by looking at the web address you were taken to when you clicked the link. It will normally have the name of the legitimate company in it somewhere, but the rest of it will be very unusual.

You have to remember that the people who are sending phishing emails are professional thieves. There is a whole lot of money to be made by tricking people into giving out their personal information, so they usually spend a great deal of time and effort to make both the emails and websites look very real.

Coming across as being the real website is something that the phishing criminals spend a lot of time to perfect. Because they want to ultimately steal your personal information, and profit from this, they will go to great lengths to appear to be real. They will use the appropriate logos and other features that you will find on the real website, which tends to put you at ease.

It can be very difficult for the average person to determine if an email or website is real. The criminals are counting on you to not be able to tell the difference and trust that you are on the real website. This lets them steal your information with great ease.

Your best defense to a phishing attack is to make it a habit to never click on a link in an email. Even if you think the email is real, you are better off to go to the website as you normally would. If you never click on a link in a phishing email, then you can never become the victim of a phishing attack.