- Ryon Phernambucq, financial planner, Fiscal Private Client Services

Cybercrime is on the uptick. Cybercriminals are becoming more professional in their approach by exploiting human vulnerabilities to illicit money from people using various methods.

According to Bidvest Insurance, there are over 13 000 cyber-attacks happening daily in South Africa. One of the various methods used to swindle victims is through a phishing email.

What is a phishing email attack?

Simply put, it is a fraudulent practice of sending emails ostensibly from a known or trusted sender in order to get targeted individuals to reveal confidential information about themselves. An email from a fraudster may read like it comes from your colleague, your friend or even your bank, but when scrutinised, the email address, is usually from an unknown sender.

How to recognise a phishing email

Emails that are often phishing attacks claim that you have:

been a victim of fraud and need to login urgentlydone something that will result in your account being suspended unless you loginviolated terms and conditions and need to loginreceived a payment that needs to be confirmed

The best way to ensure you don’t fall victim to a phishing attack is to avoid websites that are not secure. Secure websites will have “https” in the full website link. Unsecure websites will have “http” instead.

Receiving an email coming from what seems to be your colleague or friend and asking you to purchase vouchers (e.g., iTunes) and emailing photos of voucher codes to them, is one common example.

How can I protect myself?

Phishing emails usually include a link prompting users to select it and disclose personal information. Avoid clicking on a link in an email claiming to be from a financial institution, e.g., your bank. If the email is suspect, delete it immediately.

As a reminder, it is important to apply some critical thinking to emails requesting any form of payments, giving up passwords (you should never be giving passwords to anyone), nor should you be clicking on links as a result of a request.

Although the measures mentioned in this article can help prevent these types of incidents from happening, it is not fool proof, and some attempts do make it through the defences, so please be vigilant and apply your mind to requests that may seem suspicious.

As a financial planner I see how quickly phishing victims are caught and how these attacks can destroy one’s financial wealth. If you are in any doubt about an email request, contact your IT Department at work, or your financial institutions fraud department.

For more email info@fiscal.co.za or see www.fiscal.co.za