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News from Omni Connections:
“Phisher” scams are becoming more popular among fraudsters and you should pay close attention to not get hooked. This is how a phishing scam works:
You receive an email from a company you do business with – your ISP, your bank or your cellular provider. The e-mail or phone call indicates that you need to provide or validate payment information soon or you run the risk of your account being turned off or deactivated. Frequently, you are directed to a website that looks remarkably like the company’s official website, but the address of the website is a little bit different. For example, a company’s official website might be abccompany.com. But a phisher e-mail would direct you to abccompany-verify.com or abccompany-accounts.com and the rest of the page or site would look official.
Don't get hooked
To protect yourself from one of these scams, the Federal Trade Commission recommends the following:
1. If you get an e-mail that warns you with little or no notice that an account of yours will be shut down unless you validate or reconfirm your personal information, do not reply. Instead, contact the company with a website or phone number you know to be true.
2. Be careful when e-mailing personal and financial information. Before submitting information, look for the lock in the status bar or “https” in the URL on the browser’s status bar.
3. Review credit card and bank statements carefully as soon as you get them to determine if there are any unauthorized charges. Also, be aware if one of your statements or bills is late coming to you and call the bank or credit card company to confirm your billing address.
4. Report suspicious activity to the FTC and send suspicious e-mails to uce@ftc.gov .
Check your Credit Report to ensure that your credit history from all 3 reporting agencies is in order.
To stay on top of the latest scams, visit the Federal Trade Commission’s website www.ftc.gov and the Identity Theft Resource Center’s website www.idtheftcenter.org . Both sites are updated regularly and will list any new or major scams.
Check the Links page for software you can download to catch viruses, spyware, trojans, etc.
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