Anti-Phishing & Identity Protection

These days, when more and more business and personal transactions are performed over the internet, it is absolutely vital that you know who you are dealing with. If you don’t, you could be giving your information to a person you would least want your details to be given to.

Phishing is what you call the situation when a fisherman catches a confused and bewildered fish. Wait, no, it’s about when someone sends you an email that looks legitimate and from a recognized authority, such as a bank, or a lot of other places in involve money, and it tries to either request your internet banking password (which no real bank will ever do in an email!) or it tries to get you to click on a link and visit a website that looks like the real thing, but is fake and just wants you to enter your bank details so that a malicious user can take that information and steal from your bank account.

Many others will also want your full name, date of birth, postal address, mother’s maiden name and many other critical pieces of information, and then pretend to be you! That’s right, it happens, it’s very serious and identity theft really does happen.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), identity theft affects millions of households just within the U.S. alone each year costing approximately $6.4 billon per year. Further information includes: the average amount of money stolen per victim is $5,000, 89% of identity theft occurs offline, 1 in 4 Americans have been notified by an entity of some sort regarding a data breach compromising their personal information, and perhaps the most shocking of all: identity theft is committed every 3 seconds.

So be careful of what links you click on in emails and if in doubt, don’t click on anything. Always use direct web addresses (URLs) when accessing important websites, and if you are not sure, we’re are here to help. At Neuron Computer Services, we don’t like the fact that there is nasty people out there and want to help fight against them.

If you have a questionable email, forward it to us and ask us what we think. You will get a prompt reply telling you whether we think it is good or not. What have you got to lose? Don’t lose your identity! Be Internet smart today.