Beware of Phishing

What is Phishing? Phishing is a type of fraudulent technique used to get access to sensitive information like username, password, and credit card details from users, by disguising as famous and trustworthy institutions like banks, schools, and working partners. Phishing generally reaches users through e-mails, instant messages, fake websites, and social media. Phishing campaigns often circulate during holidays, events, natural disasters, epidemics, major political elections, and more. It is significant to understand phishing to completely avoid any threats in the future.

 The major risks that are attached to Phishing are the misuse of sensitive information. The person can obtain your details and will further sell them to a third party. Another risk is that it contains a malware virus. By clicking on any link or attachments, you can infect your laptop or PC with malware which leads to data loss, data leakage, and other financial loss.

Phishing is an illegal technique that some people use for their benefit leaving the victim to face the consequences if they are not able to avoid them. But what are the impacts of phishing? The main effect of this threat is financial loss. If the scammer gets hold of the victim’s bank details, they can easily transfer the money to their account. This will lead to reputation loss of the bank whose name was used in this situation. Because the blame will be on the official institution, it may damage the brand’s reputation and the customers will lose faith in the organization. Phishing can also include intellectual property theft including trademarks, patents, trade secrets, and so on, which is significant to any organization. Intellectual property theft may threaten the future of the company.

Nowadays, cyberattacks have become common practice. Everyone needs to be smart and should be vigilant to suspicious emails, links, and websites. Analyze carefully before sharing your personal account information with anyone. Besides these small measures, it is important to educate users about all the things they need to avoid to protect themselves.