Are you too smart to fall for an online scam? Take this quiz
Millions of people fall for scam emails every day. To respond to this problem, Google has launched a new quiz to test your ability to identify phishing emails.
Phishing – or attempts to steal your sensitive information such as passwords, account numbers and credit cards – is “the most common form of cyberattack”, according to Google’s Jigsaw product manager Justin Henck. “One percent of emails sent today are phishing attempts.”
To raise awareness about phishing and cyber security, Google’s technology incubator Jigsaw created the quiz with the help of about 10,000 journalists, activists and political leaders across the world.
The questions were designed to teach people to spot the techniques that hackers use to trick them as well as the telltale signs of phishing emails.
Below are the tips that the quiz shares:
- Be cautious about attachments and hyperlinks, including URLs designed to look like popular websites, which may send you to fraudulent login pages.
- Read the sender’s email domain carefully to make sure the email comes from a legitimate/official source.
- When opening PDF attachments, make sure you trust the sender and use a browser or an online service to open them safely.
- Approve account access requests only if you trust the developer. You can check this by evaluating the domain that is displayed and clicking on it for more details.
Apart from knowing the signs, Henck also recommended enabling two-step verification on your account.
“When you have two-factor authentication enabled, even if an attacker successfully steals your password, they won’t be able to access your account,” said Henck.
Take the quiz here.
Have you been the victim of any email scams? Share your story in the comments.