There is a new wave of phishing spam emails hitting inboxes lately. A “phishing” scam involves an effort to try and gather sensitive information from you, such as banking information. These are among the most dangerous types of “spam” you can receive.
Some of the emails that scammers send have a branded appearance of a popular credit card provider. The ones I have been receiving lately are branded with American Express. Luckily, I don’t own an American Express card, so I immediately know it is fishy. But the look of these emails is quite convincing, so be careful.
Banks and credit card service providers usually include detailed information such as your name or the last few digits of your account number. But even this is not a “for sure” thing, so always express caution.
The body of the “fraud” message might even include a lot of details about a “suspicious transaction” that happened on your card. In my case, it was a description of a real store with a large charge amount – something that might seem believable to me if I thought someone really had my American Express card. But in truth, the transaction description is fake.
The body will also include links that try to lead you to a website. The email will try to convince you that you need to visit that link and probably fill out information about you, your login, or your financial details. They might try to convince you that this process is for you to “confirm” something about your account. The rule is – don’t click the links!
If you receive such an email and think it might be from your legitimate provider, try calling them first or visit their website directly through a browser (not by clicking any links).
