AS fraudsters continually find new ways of swindling individuals or businesses through various scams, phishing scams remain a major concern.
In light of this phenomenon, Chairman of the Bankers Association of Namibia Mpumzi Pupuma cautions Namibians not to become victims of phishing scams.
Phishing scams are typically fraudulent emails that appear to come from legitimate entities such as financial institutions, government agencies or other well known organisations or companies, which seek to steal personal information that will be used to effect fraudulent purchases or transactions on private accounts.
“Beware, phishing or fraudulent emails may contain links to phony websites, contain attachments for you to open or request you to share personal or financial information by using clever or compelling language such as an urgent need to update your information, decline a payment or communicate with you to ensure the security or your accounts,” explains Pupuma.
He adds that when you click on a link to a phony website, your computer is infected with malicious software that enables the perpetrators to capture your usernames and passwords and collects the detailed information it was programmed to collect like for example login details, which it then send out to where ever it was programmed to send it to.
Similarly text-message phishing or a smishing scam is a phishing attempt sent via SMS or text message to a mobile phone or device.
This tactic is also referred to as smishing. The purpose of text message phishing is the same as traditional email phishing to convince recipients to share their sensitive or personal information.