Prime Rate Credit

In the age of increased cyber awareness, it’s a wonder that online identity thieves still find it worthwhile to send out what are called “phishing” emails to get people to unwittingly give up their personal information, credit card numbers, and bank routing and account numbers over the internet and have hundreds if not thousands of dollars stolen from them.

But there is a reason these phishers still do it, because it is still a profitable enough business and they’re still getting away with it to enough of a degree to make money at it. You may think, well who could fall for those phishing email scams?

Well, there are still a lot of people, many times not as internet saavy, many times older folks who simply haven’t had the same amount of experience online and with the new world of emails and online business, who may fall into this trap, but there are also younger people who fall for very high tech scams that seem so real, you and I might even take a second look.

For example, one day I received a Wells Fargo email asking for me to confirm some details about my account before it was officially “open”. And guess what the ironic part was? I actually am waiting for a Wells Fargo Business account to be opened right now, and thought this was real at first. The fact that the email was not filter out by my email spam filter, coupled with the fact that I really was opening a Wells Fargo account, made me think that this was a real request for information at first.

But on second look, I became weary because it provided a link to a website and asked for a user name and password, both of which I did not even have yet. I knew already at this point that this was phony, but just wanted to do a little more investigating. I actually kept the email but banned the email address from sending me future phishing emails.

You have to be really, really careful. Do not ever follow links and provide your user name and password. If you’re unsure, and really do business with the bank of credit card the email says it’s from, log onto the website directly and send the customer service an email to see if the company requested info. At the very least, report the spam to the company so they are aware a spammer and possible phisher is sending emails under the companies name for information.