Phishing is the use of fraudulent emails, websites and other techniques to get people to give away confidential information such as credit card details and other personal information by acting as a respected company. You may have encountered phishing if you received a suspected email from PayPal asking you to update your details that turned out wasn’t from PayPal at all – since PayPal has a strict policy of not asking for this information, that wasn’t from PayPal. In this article we are going to look at how you can prevent your customers from falling victim to phishing and stop phishers from using your reputation to steal people’s personal information.The first thing all companies should do in protecting their customers from phishing is to start a customer education campaign. Most of the steps which need to be taken in order to prevent phishing lies with the customers but often customers are not sure of what they should be doing. They need to be taught not to give out their personal information in response to an email, to install anti-phishing software on their computer, and to inquire about any suspicious emails. If you want to protect your customers from phishing you need to start by educating them and teaching them about these steps. The second thing you can do as a company to protect your customers from falling victim to phishing is to implement a policy in which you never ask for personal details, log in details or credit card details via email. Publish this policy and regularly ensure that your customers know about it. Tell them what type of emails they may receive from you and what emails (including the sharing of personal information) they will never receive from you. Let them know who they should contact if they ever receive an email which appears to go against your company’s policy in this regard.If a customer alerts you to a possible phishing incident take this seriously and do everything you can to get the phishing website shut down and alert your clients to this incident in order to protect them from giving out their personal information.Going into specific details on how to secure your website is outside the scope of this article- so we recommend you speak with your IT manager or hosting provider to make sure unauthorized users do not have access to your database and that this is checked regularly.Stop phishers from stealing your customers’ personal information and stop customers from falling victim to phishing by educating your customers about the steps that you are taking to protect them and the things that they can do in order to protect themselves. Today, people not only have the ability to ruin your reputation but also enrich themselves in the process and harm others in doing so. Protect yourself and your customers by putting an anti-phishing policy in place today. Chris Meacham is Managing Member and owner of Now IT Works. Now IT Works provides computer networking services with fixed fees and response guarantees to small and medium sized businesses throughout CT, MA, RI and NY.
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