The holiday weekend has now played harbinger to the end of the year sale and as cyber Monday progresses, more and more cybercriminals would come out from the dark crevices of the internet. With a boom in online shopping over the years, criminals have resorted to the concerted use of various means of phishing and social engineering techniques for their benefit. Holiday shoppers are being directed to websites that serve as a platform from which a phishing attack is launched. Hence, having the cognizance of recognizing a phishing website is important as the year-end sale commences.
Some sophisticated attacks involve well-crafted phishing sites that are hard to detect, as they are good enough to blend in while pretending to be a legitimate site. Hence, our experts have suggested a few ways below to spot a phishing website.
Checking the connection type
A good point to start would be checking the connection of the website if you suspect the page not being a legitimate one. The check is a fairly easy one as well. All you need to do is, click on the URL of the website and check for the “HTTPS” tag. This illustrates that the connection between the client and the server is an encrypted one. Along with this check, one can also check for the SSL certificate. Most secure and legitimate websites have as SSL certificate provided by an authorized provider.
Scrutinizing the URL
Most phishing websites resemble legitimate ones and hence their URLs are similar as well. The URL needs to be checked for any errors in spellings which might be caused due to the addition of an extra letter or misspelling. The URL in such a case might look like a trusted URL but might be a different URL with an almost similar spelling. Hackers may also make a change to the domain, opting to use a different domain rather than using the same domain as the legit website does.
Ownership of the Website
There are resources available online, that allow you to check the ownership of a certain website through its domain registration details. If the website has been registered and operations for a span of 12 months or less, or the site claiming to be of a leading brand but is registered to a single individual, can be signs of a phishing site.
Content is always the King
Brands and their parent companies invest a lot of time and money in making a website live. These websites usually have a lot of content, picture, and advertisements for the product or services they market. If there are grammatical errors, low-resolution pictures or misinformation about the products they market, then chances are high that you may have landed on a phishing site.
Apart from this, one should always look for contact information and privacy policies, while checking what kind of payment methods are accepted on the website. This information is vital for any business. Any website that accepts funds only through wire transfers is a warning sign that you have landed on a phishing site.
With the information provided above, you can implement a strong first line of defense just like eScan Total Security Suite, which not only offers protection from phishing, but also provides security from evolving computer viruses, cyber-threats such as Ransomware, Adware, Spyware, Trojans, and Spam.
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