How to Protect Your Account Information from Phishers and Hackers

Banks and other financial institutions require our personal information and other contact details when we open an account with them.  This is part of the security procedure in order to ensure that they will be dealing with the account holder only.   Some of us find it very cumbersome when banks have many verification methods before they process our requests, even if it is simply an SOP in order to prevent phishing and not be victimized by hackers. 

Phishers and hackers have become very creative in their trade lately.  They write letters through our emails informing us of irregularities in our accounts; they also provide a fraudulent link that will allegedly allow us to check that irregularity and wham, they get access to our account, use the money there and before we know it, our savings is gone.  Scary; right? 

Here are some important steps that we can do in order for our account not to fall into the hands of these phishers:

1.  Check the email address of the letter sender.  Our instinct can tell if the email address is official or not.  If the email address uses a public email domain such as @yahoo.com, or @gmail.com then that's a red flag.  Bank employees have official email addresses that they use to communicate in an official manner to their account holders.    

2.  Be vigilant of the content of the letter and don't just click on the link attached.  We can go straight to the site we commonly access and double check our account.  Normally, we can tell from the contents of the email if the letter sender is legit or not.   My experience with phishing emails is that they tell us information not consistent about our account and its contents.  Sometimes you wonder where they get the totally false info and from that alone, we can tell it is meant to trick us.  

3.  Our PIN, passwords, CVV, CA passwords, and other account information should be safeguarded by us.  We should never share them with anyone like through text messages from texters purporting to be bank employees or callers acting like bank employees.  

4. When someone writes you from an unknown website, you can tell from the information if the website is fake.  For example, when it looks haphazardly done (lots of typo and grammatical errors) then it is suspect.  Browse some more and you'll find out if they have a physical office or a contact number.  If these are nowhere to be found, then most probably, this office is non-existent.  It is best not to communicate to that letter sender.   Or there might be malware connected to it.  

Remember, phishers succeed because of our irresponsibility and carelessness.  Think twice before giving anyone your personal information.  Even if the content of the email sounds very alarming, don't just believe it to be true.  Phishers proliferate because there are gullible people.  Don't be one of them.