Phishing: how not to take the bait
Lesson 10 of 16 in the course “Cybersecurity from Scratch”. Free, with animations and a quiz.
What phishing is
Phishing is luring you to a fake page or into a conversation so you hand over a password, a code or money yourself. No virus needed, just your reaction. That’s why phishing always pushes emotions: urgent, scary or very profitable. “Your account will be locked in 24 hours”, “login from another country”, “you’ve received a bonus”. The stronger the emotion, the slower you should act.
How to read an address
The key part of an address is the last two parts before the first “/”. In binance.com.login-check.io/auth the site’s owner is login-check.io, and “binance.com” at the start is just a prefix anyone can write. In accounts.binance.com/login the owner is binance.com. Read right to left up to the first “/”, and most fakes are obvious at once.
Fakes that fool the eye
Scammers register addresses one letter off: blnance instead of binance. They add words: binance-support, binance-verify. And some addresses use letters from another alphabet: a Cyrillic “і” looks like a Latin i, but it’s a different site. Your eye won’t catch that. A password manager and a passkey will: they simply have nothing for the fake address.
Even in the top ad spot
Scammers buy search engine ads, so a fake “official wallet” ends up as the first result. Download it, and your seed phrase is gone on day one. So install wallets and exchange apps only from the official app store or from an address you checked on the project’s official website or social accounts. Don’t click sponsored results in search at all.
One habit instead of a hundred rules
Remembering every sign is hard, so here’s one habit: never follow links from emails, texts and messages to anywhere you log in or pay. Open the app or your saved bookmark yourself. If something is really wrong with your account, you’ll see it there. If you don’t, the email was phishing. In the trainer, practise telling real messages from fake ones.
Check yourself
- Which address actually belongs to Binance?
Correct answer: accounts.binance.com/login. Right before the first “/” it ends in binance.com. “accounts.” is a section of the site itself. - Dan gets an email: “Suspicious login. Confirm your account within 24 hours” with a link. What should he do?
Correct answer: Not click the link, open the exchange app himself and check there. If the issue is real, it’ll show in the app. A 24-hour deadline is a classic phishing sign. - Dan searches for where to download a crypto wallet. The first result is “Sponsored” and the address looks official. What should he do?
Correct answer: Skip the ad and install from the official app store or a verified address. Fake wallets regularly get into search ads. The app store and the project’s official site are safer.
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