As a small business owner I receive my fair share of unwanted email messages, so today I wanted to show you what a typical phishing email looks like:
Phishing is where the bad guys are impersonating someone else, like the Better Business Bureau, and then they want you to click a link or download a file, however this link or download will likely cause harm to your computer, so don’t do it.
What tipped me off that this was a bogus email?
- The email name is from yong_evans@newyork.bbb.org which is false because the BBB uses only email names like bbb.org and never newyork.bbb.org.
- I am not a member of the BBB, so they have no reason to be sending me an email.
- The email content has an opening line: Owner/Manager. If I were a member then they would use my full name, or probably my business name, but never the generic Owner/Manager
- Reputable companies do not send email attachments like a ZIP file.
Using precautions like this you can stay victim-free when reading email each day.