- Email phishing scams
are no longer just Nigerian Princes
asking to wire money into your bank account.
(upbeat music)
They're much, much more sophisticated
and if you think that you're too smart
to be fooled, think again.
Hi, I'm Josh.
This is, "All Things Secured."
Thank you for joining me.
Whether you've come here on your own search
or whether you've been asked by a friend
or a family member to watch this,
I hope that you'll take it seriously.
We're gonna be walking through what's known
as the S.T.O.P Method.
The S.T.O.P Method means
that when you look at an email,
you're gonna ask yourself four questions.
Is this email suspicious?
Is it telling me to click a link or a button?
Is it offering something that's too good to be true
and is it pushing me to do something immediately
or fast?
If we can do that,
if we can train ourselves
to be a little more critical of the emails
that are coming into our inbox,
we're gonna be much better positioned
to not fall for many of these very complex,
very tricky email phishing scams
that are coming into our inbox nowadays.
Now with each question,
I'm gonna provide some examples
that you can see approximately
what it might look like,
for you to have this type of scam come into your inbox.
We're gonna start with S obviously,
which is Suspicious.
Does the email look suspicious
Have you ever opened your email before
and you just kinda get this feeling
that something's off?
- I feel real weird about tonight.
- Sometimes that happens
and sometimes it's a legitimate email,
but sometimes that's a red flag
that means you should be paying a little closer attention.
That's what happened
at the Miami University Community Federal Credit Union.
If you look at this email here,
they've got a logo, it looks legitimate,
but if you look really close, there's a couple things
that just make it feel not right.
There are words like accounts
that are misspelled
or there's a prop, improper use of grammar.
There's an impersonal closing
where it doesn't even offer
the name of the person who's writing the email.
These are not an indication immediately
that that's a scam,
but it is something that should set off the alarm bells
and make you look closer
before you click any links in that email
before you do anything
that that email's asking you to do, stop.
The second question you need to ask yourself is,
is this email telling me to click a link
or a button?
Another popular scam
is let's say the Netflix email scam
where you get an email saying your account
is gonna be suspended if you don't update your billing,
there's been an error in your billing.
Please click here.
So you click on that email,
you go to the website,
you sign in with your credentials
and you add in your billing information
just like they asked you to and you're good to go.
Your Netflix continues to stream.
But what you didn't realize
is that that link sent you to a copy
of the Netflix website
where you just gave them your login information
for Netflix in addition to all of your billing information.
This scam can easily be avoided.
I'll tell you how in just a moment,
but that's something you need
to be always watching out for.
If an email tells you to click a link
or click a button,
unless you are 100% sure that that link is good,
try not to click it.
Just you know, pull that finger back.
You don't, don't click it.
The third question you should ask yourself is,
is this email offering something
that is too good to be true?
My favorite example of this
is the IRS Tax Refund phishing scam.
Let's say you got an email in your inbox
that said that the IRS had miscalculated your taxes
and they now owe you a refund of 400 and something dollars.
Sounds great, doesn't it?
All you have to do is click here
and apply for that refund.
(beeps)
Sounds like everything that you would want,
but it is a little too good to be true, isn't it?
If something's offering you something
too good to be true, stop.
And the fourth and final question is,
is this email pushing you to do something immediately
or quickly?
Now this is the type of scam
that really preys on our emotions.
So let's say you get an email
from what you think is a family member
or a friend telling you that they are stuck in some place
and they need money immediately in order to fix their car
or to get back to their house
or to get a hotel room
and they need you to wire this money.
Don't even ask about it.
Just send this money to this bank account.
Please, can you help me?
- Tell me, did you send the money?
- Now of course we wanna help
and maybe they do need help.
But again, you need to stop
before you just quickly do something
that may cost you a lot of money in the end.
So let's say now that you've asked the four questions
and you're suspicious that this email
is a phishing scam,
what do you do now that those red flags
in your head are flying?
Well, there's one thing that I recommend
and that is to find a way,
a different method
or a different mode of communication
to confirm the veracity of that email.
What do I mean?
Well, let me tell you a story.
If you've ever heard of Barbara Corcoran,
who's one of the sharks on "Shark Tank."
In 2020, she revealed the fact that her firm
was swindled out of almost $400,000
because of a very simple phishing scam.
It went like this.
Her accountant, her bookkeeper was sent an email
from their email address
that told the bookkeeper to pay an invoice
to that amount of 300 and something thousand dollars
immediately.
So it looked like it came from Barbara.
It was something that was common
that they had to do to pay these invoices,
and so she did.
It wasn't later until they realized
that that email was actually a phishing scam.
The bank account was the bank account
for that fraudster,
and they had just lost more than a quarter
of a million dollars.
Now, what could they have done?
There's a couple of things
from a corporate standpoint in their email security
that they could have done,
but let's look at this from a personal standpoint.
The bookkeeper could have taken
a different form of communication
to confirm this with Barbara.
Instead of emailing back,
which the hackers might've seen,
she could have walked into Barbara's office
and asked, is this an invoice that you asked me to send?
- Barbara.
Barbara!
- She could have texted her.
She could've called her.
She could have used a different type of instant message
to confirm that that was an actual invoice
that Barbara immediately wanted her to send.
And that's something that you can do as well.
Let's say you get this urgent email from a friend of yours
or a family member asking you to send money,
we'll find a different way to connect with them
to confirm that that is something
that is actually happening.
If you are getting an email from Netflix
saying that you need to update your billing information
instead of using and clicking that link,
why don't you go into a different browser,
click into Netflix and open that up
and find out if they're actually asking you
to update your information.
Same with a bank.
Same with anything else.
Don't click on the links.
Type in your own URL.
Don't immediately do what they're asking you to do.
You need to confirm it through a different method.
Now, is this gonna protect you from all phishing scams?
Absolutely not.
There's gonna be new and better ways
that people figure out how to scam us out of our money
and how to scam us out of our information.
But these four simple questions,
is this email suspicious?
Is it telling me to click a link?
Is it offering something too good to be true?
Is it pushing me to do something immediately?
These, if we can keep that in our mind
and allow them to send up those red flags
are going to keep us from falling
from the most simple email phishing scams
that are out there.
Hopefully this is helpful to you.
If so, share it with somebody else you know
who might be a little more susceptible to this kind of scam.
Let them know how they can protect themselves
and if this video was helpful, give it a thumbs up.
Subscribe to this channel
because I offer a lot of great tips
for keeping yourself secure online
through "All Things Secured."
Thanks so much.
Have a wonderful day.