Phishing Scams – How to Recognize Them

In a recent post about mystery shopping and PayPal, I mentioned “phishing” schemes. You probably get lots of phishing emails that say they are from PayPal, banks, eBay, Amazon or some other known and trusted company, but are really attempts to get your personal information. If you are not sure if you would recognize a phishing scam (lots of people get conned by them every day) I found a simple and fun way to learn more about recognizing and avoiding phishing scams.

Carnegie Mellon University has created an online game called Anti-Phishing Phil. It takes just a few minutes to play and in the process you learn the tricks phishers use to try and trick you into giving up your personal information. The game uses easy to understand tips and examples to show you how to recognize a legitimate site vs. a scam site, a simple way to use Google to avoid getting scammed by phishers and more.

Anti-Phishing Phil points out that the scammers create sites that, in many cases, look identical to the legitimate sites. Unless you know what to look for, you could be deceived into giving up your personal information.