Don't Go Phishing with Thieves

Phishing is a broad term for many tactics designed to steal information from you that can lead to identity theft.

Often, you are encouraged to follow a link and then, sign in or give some other form of identification like a password.

To avoid being sent to a phishing site, here is one of a number of hints (but one often not practiced): Check the URL.

That is the address and it is in the address bar of every website and is included in every live link.

You can right click the link and get a menu. Then choose copy link or copy URL or whatever is there.

Then paste it into an editor like Notepad and look at it.

What does it say? Does the address look familiar? Is it spelled like the authentic address or is there an extra letter or a letter omitted?

Note: Going to the site will not usually cause a problem, but it may put cookies on your browser; so I do not recommend it unless you know what you are doing.

For instance, anything from Facebook will be spelled correctly and with no variation, "facebook.com"

If it does not look right, it probably is not right.

Avoid the heartache and don't go phishing with thieves.