Have you been Phished?  A phishing email tries to get you to reveal some of your personal information in order to access your accounts or even worse steal your identity. You have seen these emails, often claiming to be from eBay, PayPal, or some well known bank and ask you to verify some of your information.

As soon as this happens, you should log in to your real service and change you log-in information as well as notifying your service to check for any activity.

Basically, real Banks and other financial based institutions do not send you emails asking for personal information. Also remember tat a five minute phone call to your bank can save you a lot of stolen dollars, months of frustration and more.  Never click on any links in the strange emails you get. If the institution needs verification of your identity call them.

Remember not to fill in forms contained in emails and if you do not have an account with the institution ignore the email.

You can report phishing email to the institution of your choice. Unfortunately, it won’t do anything much but it may make you feel better. and who knows, after a million people email to complain, our elected officials might seriously look into it.  I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

If you think you have fallen for a phishing scam immediately contact your institution by phone and find out if anything suspicious has happened.  Let them know you think you might be a victim and explain what happened.

This post used a lot of Dan Butler’s ideas and his excellent newsletter I highly recommend called TNPCNewsletter.com which can be accessed at this address.  He also has written books and I have been reading his newsletter for a few years.   I am always impressed with the level of accuracy and professionalism, plus he is a very nice guy.