
How to stay safe online
The vast majority of us use the internet on a daily basis, and couldn’t imagine life without it. We shop, bank, game, share our lives and stay in touch online. It’s great, but it’s easy to forget about online fraud.
Cybercrime statistics can be scary but a few simple actions can help to protect you, so take control and stay safe on the internet.
Online safety tips
Common internet scams
Social media safety tips
3 useful online safety tips
These are two common internet scams you’ll want to know about…
Phishing Email Scams
What is a phishing email?
This is a type of scam where the scammer contacts you via email, often pretending to be from your bank, utility provider or a shopping website in an attempt to steal personal information. There will often be a sense of urgency.
How to spot a phishing email:
- Check the sender email address – often this is a key giveaway as the email address doesn’t match the genuine website address or has a random sequence of numbers and letters.
- Do they use your name or ‘Dear customer’? If they don’t use your name or personal details it’s likely they don’t know who you are.
- Check the format, grammar and spelling. If it doesn’t look right, it probably isn’t.
What to do if you get a phishing email:
- Don’t click on the links or download any attachments.
- Delete it to prevent yourself from accidentally opening it in future.
- If you want to double check, get in touch with the genuine company by looking up their contact details from a trusted source, e.g. your bank card, previous letters or their website (not the email!)
- If you receive a suspicious email impersonating YBS, please forward it to phishing@emis.ybs.co.uk and a specialist third party company will investigate.
Fake Websites
These are sites set up to look like genuine businesses that are offering cheap deals so they can collect payments from you, with no intention of providing the goods or services. How to spot a fake website
- If it looks too good to be true it probably is, so be wary of extremely cheap deals.
- Does the site look professional? Check the format, grammar and spelling, as well as business information, small print and return policies.
- Check independent review sites such as Trustpilot rather than the reviews on the site, as they could’ve written these themselves.
- Check the address bar – secure sites will show a padlock symbol and the full URL will start with: https:// - the ‘s’ stands for secure.
- Close the window down and leave the site.
- Don’t enter any personal details, try to buy anything or download anything.
- Don’t click on any pop-ups (a window that suddenly appears) that may have a special deal or warning to coax you into clicking.
What to do if you think a website is fake
Find out more
For more information about online safety, try these articles on Online security at YBS or Types of Online Fraud and Scams.
Online safety includes your social media accounts; here are 10 social media safety tips: