How to Spot a Phishing Email

As the holidays draw near, more of us will be doing our shopping online, and you should be informed of the latest scams being done on the web so you can avoid become duped by a new breed of con artists.

One such web scam is "phishing", where you receive seemingly-valid and legitimate e-mails asking for your account information because of various excuses. The e-mail will also contain some link or button for you to click so that you can visit the website and update your information.

However, those links can actually take you to a website that looks exactly like the one you intended to visit, but instead of logging you in to your account, the website records your username and password. In this way, these con artists would visit the legitimate website using your account information and steal from you.

More people are falling victim into this, and everyone can become a victim of it even if you claim that you have a "trained eye" for phishing e-mails. As the holidays get closer you are bound to receive more e-mails from online retailers advertising their latest and greatest sale. However, not all of them are legitimate.

So how do you know if an e-mail is valid or not. Here are major signs of spotting a phishing e-mail.

Misspelled words - Phishers are most likely foreigners and English is not their native language. You may notice the e-mail as having simple and very obvious spelling mistakes. If an e-mail would come from a legitimate company, it wouldn't be sent to you with a badly-written body, would it?

Fake Web addresses - Before clicking on that link or button, look at the bottom of your browser or e-mail program to see where the link would actually take you. Search for legitimate websites like "ebay.com" and avoid links that would lead you to, say..."http://www.signin/ebey.com/135234.htm".

Reason for the e-mail - Read carefully what the e-mail is about and ask yourself if a company would contact you in that way. For instance, if they say your account has been compromised, do you think your bank would refer to you as "Dear Concerned Customer"? It would be more likely that they call you and let you know of any problems.

Know how a valid company would send you an e-mail - You may have probably received e-mails from eBay before, so check if the most recent one looks similar to the ones you have received before. Has the company asked you to login from an e-mail before. Also, if you do not even know the company who is e-mailing you, do not click any links and simply delete it.