Spear Phishing-----

Have you ever received a spam advertising a product like perfumes and electronic gadgets that let you link into a website? Or have you received an email from a bank asking you to send sensitive information required for your "account"?

Beware! It could just be another form of spear phishing.

What is spear phishing?
Unlike traditional spams, spear phishing is a personalized spam which does not get filtered in your e-mail. Those who send it, steal email addresses and send their spam messages using legitimate email addresses.

While there are 200 billion spam messages sent every day, 0.4 percent of it is personalized spam which amounts to 800 million a day attempts to try to steal personal information online.

Phishing, usually is easy to prevent. You just need to look at the sender, if you do not know the sender then don't click on the links. But, if you are a bit of a risk taker at least check the content. Some phishing messages are easy to spot when they have grammatical errors. Or copy the link to your address bar while not clicking into it, the true link would appear by then.

The best way to prevent phishing is to always keep in mind that you have common sense. Ask yourself, how did the person sending the email know about your email address? If you don't know the person then don't take the offer. If it is a banking institution, why would it ask for sensitive information online? This are just some of the simple questions that one needs to keep in mind whenever s/he encounters spear phishing. Again, vigilance is the key.

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Baguilat, Raymond Marvic C.
06-78921