There are a lot of form of scams nowadays. I don’t know how the conscience of the scammers can take this, but hey, scamming is like a common thing now. You can’t even imagine that the person is a scammer because he or she doesn’t even look like one. May it be in the online world or the real world, it’s not safe anymore. Sheezz.
Yesterday, I almost fell for one. I received an email that claims they are from Unionbank Of The Philippines. Why I almost fell for it? Because I am a customer of Unionbank. When I first saw the email, the first thing that came to my mind was “Hey, this is not the email associated with my Unionbank Of The Philippines account, right?” I guess its true that curiosity killed the cat. Because if you are curious and not careful, bad things may really happen to you. I was curious but still, I was careful and remained suspicious. Why? I hovered my mouse to check the email of the sender, definitely not Unionbank Of The Philippines. Checked the link, it says Unionbank, but when I clicked it, I saw it right away in my browser that it’s not Unionbank! (Ha! Who do you think are you trying to fool?) And after the site loaded, I saw a warning that the site is suspected to be a phishing scam site I clicked on continue anyway, wondering if the link would really look like Unionbank and I was right, it was pretty similar to Unionbank site itself. Good thing there is a warning there I thought to myself. I was curious but remained suspicious about it so I did not a become victim, but what if, someone got curious, opened the link, and there’s no warning there, they probably became a victim of the scam. The link is a bit similar to the online banking web design of Unionbank Of The Philippines, so someone could be really careless and enter their passwords. Sometimes people don’t notice these details, I even saw a Facebook friend of mine asking for help because he thought the Facebook page was the legitimate Facebook page of Unionbank, they asked him the username and password of his online banking account, and he gave it, good thing he lost nothing because he realized right away he made a wrong move. But not all are careful. I can’t blame them, some scams are convincing, some modus operandi (style) of scammers are pretty convincing, you know.
Here’s a few tips from me for phishing scams in emails like this one. Take note of what I did yesterday, so in case you get an email like the one I received, and there’s no warning, you will not be victimized. First, if you feel suspicious about the email, hover over the sender’s name to check the real email of the sender. Depends on the email client you are using, some email clients won’t require you to hover but to click or whatsoever, whatever happens, check the email of the sender. Even if the email seems legitimate, be careful. I once received an email from a legitimate email address but the body of email was suspicious so I was careful in handling the email! So again, always be careful and observant.
Here’s the most important tip! After you click a link, always check the “Web address” you see in your web browser! Don’t forget this! Forget checking the email of the sender or even forget checking what address is on the email (because they could make it look like a legitimate link by changing the anchor text) but never ever forget to check the web address you see on your browser!
I hope we could all be careful guys. It’s hard to regret on the end. When you’ve already lost that precious thing. :googlyeyes:
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