How can I avoid email scams?
August 21, 2018How to Avoid Email Scams
Email scams — also known as “phishing scams” or “spoofed emails” — are on the rise. As a general rule you should only give out your personal financial information when visiting a secure website. You should never send personal information such as a credit card number or your social security number via an email message.
Helpful Information:
Be suspicious of any email with urgent requests for personal financial information. Phishing scams typically include upsetting or exciting (but false) statements in their emails to get people to react immediately. These emails typically ask for information such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, social security numbers, etc. Amnesty International USA will never ask you for your username and password or your social security number in an email message.
Phisher emails are typically NOT personalized. Emails from Amnesty International USA will typically include personalized information, including a salutation and specific information about your subscription at the bottom of the email message.
If you suspect a message might not be from Amnesty International, do not click on the links in an email. Instead, you can call us at any of the numbers found on our contact page: http://www.amnestyusa.org/contact/
Amnesty International will never ask you for personal financial information in an email message. You should only provide credit card information via our secure website or over the telephone. To make sure you are on a secure Web server, check the beginning of the Web address in your browsers address bar – it should be “https://” rather than just “http://”
If anything ever appears suspicious, you can call us at any of the numbers found on our contact page: http://www.amnestyusa.org/contact/
More suggestions:
Consider installing a Web browser tool bar to help protect you from known phishing fraud websites.
Ensure that you are using the latest version of your browser and that security patches have been applied. In particular, people who use the Microsoft Internet Explorer browser should immediately go to the Microsoft Security home page — http://www.microsoft.com/security/ — to download a special patch relating to certain phishing schemes.
Always report “phishing” or “spoofed” e-mails to the following groups:
– forward the email to [email protected]
– forward the email to the Federal Trade Commission at [email protected]
When forwarding these messages, always include the entire original email with its original header information intact
Notify the Internet Fraud Complaint Center of the FBI by filing a complaint on their website: http://www.ifccfbi.gov/
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