Phishing – a definition – “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”.
There’s so much ‘out there’ to watch for including unscrupulous people posing as someone else for their own gain. What we can help with is people who phish for your clients’ information, pretending to be you. Whilst it is clearly not your remit to rid the world of online criminal activity, you are able to reassure clients that you will only contact them in specific ways.
A good example of this is that you can tell your clients that you will never send an attachment by email. They can expect email alerts to let them know a document is ready for them in their secure portal, sure, but if a suspicious looking email tells them to open an attachment, they have your professional warning not to do that. Not only is this an excellent company policy to adopt, it’s something you can do easily using the Docsafe portal. It’s one of the reasons it’s so widely used by UK professionals.
A few ways to identify a phishing attack includes:
- Look at the sender of the email, click on the address – you’ll see if it is a random email address and not from the bank – just as you’d suspected.
- Whilst the email may look credible, check for obvious poor English, spelling and grammar. This is a dead giveaway.
- If you are asked for a password, it’s a scam, this should never happen in any circumstance.
- Be on your guard if the email sounds unrealistic, makes threats or has an offer too good to be true. Chances are it is.
- And we strongly recommend that you don’t follow a link from an email asking you to – access your account in your usual manner and check from there.
We work hard to keep Docsafe up to date and ahead of the curve in terms of protecting your clients – and, by association, your reputation and brand.