What is phishing?
Phishing is a method of attempting to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or company in an electronic communication. Most methods of phishing use some form of technical information designed to form a link in an e-mail. The bogus website the link leads to appears to belong to the real organisation.
Protection
- Neither a well configured firewall nor the best antivirus program alone will help you to prevent phishing attacks. Act with caution and "healthy" suspicion!
- Look out for a sender's e-mail address that is similar to but not the same as an SOS Children's Villages e-mail address. Fraudsters often sign up for free e-mail accounts with company names in their address to fool you.
- To trick you into disclosing sensitive information, fraudsters often include a link to a bogus website that looks like or sometimes looks exactly the same as the sign-in page of the legitimate website of SOS Children's Villages. Just because a site includes an SOS Children's Villages logo or looks like our real page, it is not necessarily ours! Bear in mind that logos and the appearance of legitimate websites are easy to copy.
- If you are unsure about a link to the SOS Children's Villages website provided via e-mail, do not sign in. Instead, close and then reopen your browser, and then type the website address into the address bar of your browser.
- Typing in SOS Children's Villages' correct website address (www.sos-childrensvillages.org) is the best way to ensure that you are not redirected to a bogus site.