If you’ve ever been hooked by a phishing scam, it’s probably because the scammer was posing as a trusted brand. Only a few worrying words from a service provider or credit card company can provoke you to click.
Cloudflare has assembled a list of the top 50 most-phished brands(Opens in a new window). As you’d expect, it includes companies that could cause consumers the most worry about their financial health. Below, we break out the companies that are spoofed the most by category, and we also proide some helpful tips on how to avoid getting phished.
Banks and payment services make up the majority of the list. Receiving an email that you've been charged too much on your American Express card or that your bank account has been frozen can result in forgetting everything you know about phishing when you're panicked. If you see an alert in your email, don't click on any links: First, visit your bank's website or app to check your account.
Shipping notifications are among the most-clicked emails, since we all want to know when those packages that we're eagerly awaiting will arrive. That's what makes emails such as DHL notifications all the more suspect. If you've purchased something, visit the merchant's site directly for the tracking number and then click on it from there, or look up the shipper's site and paste the tracking number into its tracker.
The best place to check up on a social-media notification is on the app or site itself. Whether it's a message about a frenemy's posting that you really want to see or a message that you've been locked out of your account, you'll be able to get all the information you need from the site directly.
How many times have you received a message about a service you subscribe to being
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