Phishing emails, which are now the latest means through which fraudsters (what I call them) get away with other people’s money, is an email in which these guys impersonate legitimate organizations and trick others into providing their personal information or account data.
This is usually done by installing malware into the victim’s system to steal sensitive and personal information such as credit card digits, bank details, or passwords.
Being one of the largest companies providing internet-access subscription services in the United States, AOL provides a range of online services for users covering areas of news, entertainment, finance, lifestyle, and weather to trending videos, and searches.
Detecting phishing emails
Since any legitimate site can fall victim to the attacks of phishers, here are some ways individuals like you and I can detect phishing emails:
Spelling
It is common sense that a legitimate company should be able to spell and spell right at that. As good grammar is an important criterion for emails.
Weird requests
Chances are that emails sent from organizations that provide a link or attachment, asking you to provide sensitive information is from a phisher. It is unlike legitimate companies to send an email asking for personal information such as passwords, credit card details, or tax numbers, neither will you be sent a link which you will be required to log in from.
Generic salutations
Similar to advertisement emails, some senders of phishing emails use generic salutations which can be appropriate for each and anyone, take, for example, “Dear customer”, “Dear friend”, or even “Hello dear”. This is usually because they currently have little or no information about the recipient of the phishing email. Also, note that not all phishers do this, so be aware!
Matching emails
Although not all legit companies have domain emails, many companies have emails that match or are similar to their company name. Also note that, like the previous point, not all senders of phishing emails do this.
Matching URLs
An authentic organization’s URL, i.e its Uniform Resource Locator–the address of its web page, ought to match. If an organization’s URL doesn’t seem to be correct or doesn’t match the context of the sent email, be cautious!. Try hovering your mouse over available embedded links and ensure the link begins with the good old https://. Note that this should be done without clicking on the link!.
Unknown or Unfamiliar attachments
Unsolicited attachments from companies are usually a red flag since a typical company’s email should direct you to their sites for downloading any document or file. Note that this, like matching emails and URLs, is not done by all phishers. Other ways of detecting phishing emails are through forceful emails to visit their website, unsolicited web links, alterations in email addresses, and differences in the official company’s logo.
Reporting AOL’s phishing emails
Now that you know how to detect a phishing email, the following are the ways you can report if you ever get a phishing email from AOL:
AOL’s Security team
In case you get any phishing email, you might as well contact the official AOL Security team so that they can quickly review and address security-related incidents and vulnerabilities to avoid your data from being publicly disclosed.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Reporting phishing emails to the FTC follows a straightforward procedure which goes as thus:
• Going to the FTC website
• Filing a consumer complaint
• Selecting ‘Robocall, unwanted telemarketing, text or spam’ and completing the procedure.
The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG)
The APWG, which is a group aimed at putting an end to cybercrimes like phishing, and ID theft among others, is a good place to report AOL’s phishing emails. All you have to do is simply forward the phishing email to this link.
DoNotPay
Another quick and effective way of reporting AOL phishing emails is by reporting to DoNotPay.
When you report AOL phishing emails to this website, it will stop you from receiving emails from the sender and will also give you the possibility of getting a spam email revenge and claiming compensation money. The process of reporting AOL phishing emails to DoNotPay involves:
Signing in or up for a DoNotPay account from a browser. Clicking on ‘spam collector’s from the dashboard. Enter your email address. Finally, forwarding the phishing email to this email.
Other methods of reporting phishing emails include reporting to other email providers such as Gmail, Outlook, and of course, Yahoo, or you might as well unsubscribe from AOL’s newsletters and emails, hence, the impostor’s email address will automatically be marked as spam and sent to your spam fold. Please note that the latter should be done as a last resort.
It takes only a click for all the information which you consider personal and have been saving to be stolen, so be cautious of the emails you get and try to report phishing emails as soon as you can for your safety.
