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Phishing

Phishing is when scammers will use emails, text messages and phone calls to try to scam their victims out of personal information. They tend to pretend to be from reputable companies or claim they are a service a victim needs. Emails and text messages tend to contain links that either can download a virus to your device for them to take control of or ask victims to fill out a form for personal information. They can also use scam websites and adverts to target victims to get details such as banking information.


How to avoid:

  • If you are suspicious of something you’ve received, report and delete.
  • Do not open or click any links.
  • Do not give personal information to anyone or a website that you don’t know is legitimate. If you aren’t sure, look it up on the internet and see if anyone else has reported it as a scam.
  • If the email is in the junk/spam folder, don’t touch it unless you know it wasn’t intended for there.
  • If you are unsure about an email, look at the whole email address. Scammers will hide behind known names but the email address won’t look right.
  • If the contents is about something that sounds real but you don’t recognise or recall i.e about a parcel that you “ordered”, ignore it.
  • If you are unsure about an email address or a number, look it up on the internet.


What to do if you’re a victim:

Report it. The National cyber security centre has pages about how to report different phishing scams and what to do if you’re a victim. 

If you've lost money or been hacked as a result of a phishing scam, report it: