How To Spot A Phishing Attack

A phishing attack is sending emails that appear to be from trusted sources to gain personal information, deliver malicious payloads, or compromise account credentials. Phishing attacks are usually transmitted to many email addresses. The contents are not specific to the receiving user and are generally along the lines of “Your Netflix account has been locked, CLICK HERE to unlock” or similar.
What advice can we give?
If in doubt, don’t click! Hover over links in emails if you are not sure they are from a trusted source. A phishing email may claim to be from a legitimate company. When you click on the link, it may look like the actual website, but double check by hovering over the link and checking the URL.
Never give out personal information online - as a rule, you should never share personal or financially sensitive information over the internet. If you are paying for an item or service, check that the website is secure and the address starts with “HTTPS”.
If the email contains spelling mistakes or has grammatical errors - this could indicate that it is a scam email; people write many phishing emails outside of the UK, so the standard of English is usually not good.
If the email asks you to do something urgent - claiming that your account will be closed unless you submit your details instils a sense of panic, double-check that it is from a natural source.
An unusual attachment - if you receive an unexpected email from a company that contains an attachment, it could include a malicious virus - don’t open it! These generally come in Word / PDF documents claiming to be an invoice or remittance advice but can be anything.