Practically everyone living on the planet Earth should understand what phishing is by now. But for those who might not, a Google search brought this up for me:

“the fraudulent practice of sending emails purporting to be from reputable companies in order to induce individuals to reveal personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.”

“an email that is likely a phishing scam”

What email phishing is

As a web services, and in particular, an email provider, we at CharlesWorks this sort of activity on a very regular basis. Millions of phishing emails come through mail servers around the world every day. These generally are not able to be easily filtered out because they are not carrying viruses or malware. More often than not (at least on my system) they end up in my spam folder. Even in there, I report them as phishing when I notice them to help ensure that they continue to be diverted from my inbox.

How to recognize phishing emails

First of all, there is always a sense of urgency. They border (and sometimes surpass) a threat that you will lose something in some short time period if you don’t respond quickly. The psychology of this is to get you to act without thinking it through.

What to do about phishing emails

Don’t click on anything. Don’t think you are going to outsmart the bad guys. Report it as a phishing message if your mail system allows it. The Microsoft Office products that CharlesWorks handles support doing this. If you are not on this type of email, call CharlesWorks at 603-924-9867 and talk to us about getting hooked up to what we believe to be the safest, most robust email available today.