Excerpt from book Unmasking the hacker - protect yourself from #phishing

It is Sunday 5 January 2020 as this is published and I am working on editing and writing more for my book and hope to have it in a good state to self publsh by end January 2020!

Updates of my book project are available from this page >> Book Updates << and once I have published it, this page will also have updates of new book projects and any giveaways associated with them.

Below is an excerpt of one of the chapters of my book "Unmasking the Hacker, Demystifing cybercrime", this one is about protecting yourself from phishing.

......................  As phishing emails tend to be a main way for criminals to compromise accounts, steal money and information and introduce malware into their targets’ computers, it pays to understand simple ways to help protect ourselves from this type of scam. When an email is spoofed, the display name and actual email address are different, so take care to check that the display name matches the sender’s email address.

If there are hyperlinks in an email, hover over them with the mouse but do not click, when you hover over the link, have a look at what the actual link is. Take a moment to think about what the email says, check that it is written in the usual way that individual or company writes when you receive email from them. Be wary when an email subject line or message body contains urgent or threatening language, consider if this is the way the company or person would normally address you or the situation.

If an email contains an attachment, consider whether or not you were expecting one form the sender or if the attachment is something you would normally receive. If an email requests money to be transferred or sensitive information to be provided check with the purported sender via other means before actioning the request to verify the email is legitimate.

While spam filters, email gateways and anti-virus applications provide some layers of security, it is important to not allow a false sense of security in them or your own abilities in spotting a scam. Just because your company, or even you as an individual, may be using the best spam filters and other security software, does not means you will not receive a malicious email. ......