Scammers have come out in full force recently with highly sophisticated phishing email messaging. Many of the cybercriminals, several under the guise that they are part of FTC, are trying to gain access to personal information or to email accounts.
The first point of emphasis is for recipients to never click on a link from a sender they are not familiar with or expecting. If an email appears to be from a familiar company, the best course of action is not to click on the link but instead go through the senders’ portals or websites and access their accounts. Deleting the email is a prudent move as well.
Other measures that are always important are keeping security software up to date and monitoring activity in bank accounts or those that contain personal information. It is essential to keep security software up to date because it can help fend off any type of cyberattack.
If someone is concerned that they have been compromised, they should immediately change their password and run a system scan. If during scans users gets a detection message, they should follow the instructions from the software to purge the system of the malware.
FTC webmail users can mark the email as phishing by clicking on the “report phishing symbol”(fishhook) located at the top of the mail. This will help the algorithm fend off future attempts.
FTC email customers can also take one more step to determine if their email account has been compromised. They are advised to log into the FTC webmail account and follow these directions:
- Select the ellipsis menu
- Go to Settings> Mail
- Scroll down to “Automatically forward emails to other email addresses” and review or change the current configuration for forwarding.
Automatic email forwarding by a scammer is a significant security risk because when an email is set to forward to an external email address, the scammer is circumventing the protections put in place to prevent accounts from being compromised.
One final bit of advice: In today’s society, people should always be cautious and careful when it comes to personal information of any kind. Scammers are constantly coming up with new approaches and have no conscience; they will take whatever they can.
And since cybercriminals are relentless, everyone must be vigilant.
