Cybersecurity: How To Protect Yourself From Phishing

Cybersecurity and protection from phishing is a top priority at BudgetBakers. It’s crucial that you, our customers,  feel safe when using our apps. This includes, for one, the guaranteed confidentiality of your data, which we won’t pass on to third parties, either now or in the future. 

For another, we want to educate you about cybersecurity and protect you from crimes such as phishing. Unfortunately, like all organizations, we are not immune to phishing attacks. It has come to our attention that customers of BudgetBakers have been targeted by hackers pretending to represent BudgetBakers, or similarly named organizations using our logos and email addresses that are similar to ours. 

Let us explain what we do to fight such attacks and how you can protect yourself from them. 

What Is Phishing And Why Is It So Successful?

Phishing is an attack that attempts to steal your money or identity. It involves asking you to reveal personal information on websites that pretend to be legitimate. Such information can be credit card numbers, bank details, or passwords.

Cybercriminals typically pretend to be reputable companies, friends, or acquaintances in a fake message, which contains a link to a phishing website.

Phishing is a popular form of cybercrime because it’s so effective. Cybercriminals successfully use emails, text messages, direct messages on social media or in video games to trick people into revealing their personal information. 

These attempts are so successful mostly because people lack awareness and training focusing on issues such as phishing and ransomware. Also, the availability of low-cost phishing kits has given amateur hackers an easy opportunity to enter the market and compete with criminal organizations. So even people with little or no IT experience can take advantage of these easily accessible tools, which are increasingly sophisticated and difficult to circumvent.

Cybersecurity at BudgetBakers

Phishing attempts may request your login credentials, or request that you provide sensitive banking information, or that you pay for “services,” or various other fees. 

BudgetBakers always will investigates the source of these attempts. However, the best defense is to exercise utmost caution when receiving unsolicited emails from any site. These emails may use misleading website names or email addresses that appear to belong to us. 

Please note that official communications from BudgetBakers will only ever use our website https://budgetbakers.com/ and will never ask for any kind of payment. We will also never ask you for passwords or other confidential information via email or any other channel such as WhatsApp. BudgetBakers only accepts payments from customers through our website, GooglePlay or the Apple AppStore, and only for our subscription products, which can be found in our store descriptions.

What you can do to protect yourself is to stay vigilant and report all phishing attempts to BudgetBakers or your email service provider. Most email services offer an easy way to report phishing attacks.

How To Protect Yourself From Phishing And Identity Theft

There are several measures you can take to protect yourself from phishing:

If you receive a suspicious email:

1. DO NOT reply, even if you think the sender is a well-known company or financial institution. Contact this institution directly if you have an account with them and ask them to verify the information contained in the email.
2. DO NOT CLICK any links provided in these emails, don’t cut and paste them into a browser. This will confirm your email address to phishers, or download a virus to your computer.
3. DO NOT OPEN attachments. If you receive a file that you aren’t expecting, contact your institution and make sure they actually sent the message and intended to send an attachment. Do not reply to the obtained email.
4. DO NOT ENTER your personal information or passwords on any untrusted website or form referenced in this email. 
5. REPORT any suspicious messages that claim to be from BudgetBakers or contain a suspicious attachment.
6. DELETE the email.

If you have replied to a suspicious email:

1. Contact your financial institution. Report the contents of your email and your actions to the security or fraud department. You can contact BudgetBakers’ support team here. 
2. FILE a police report. Contact your local police department.

You’ve already provided your account information to a phishing email? Then your institution may disable your account. This is what you should do:

1. CONTACT the support team to report the incident and get your account restored.
2. CHANGE your password immediately. If your account has been disabled, you will create a new password when you reactivate your account.
3. CHANGE the passwords to any online accounts that may be affected.
4. REPORT the message to the Anti-Phishing Working Group at reportphishing@antiphishing.org, a group of Internet Service Providers, security vendors, financial institutions, and law enforcement agencies dedicated to fighting phishing.

What else you can do to protect yourself from phishing:

Always remember to never send your personal or financial information via email. Email is not a secure method of transmitting confidential information. Remember that legitimate companies like BudgetBakers never ask for sensitive information via email.

Also, make sure to always check your credit card and bank statements for any suspicious activity or unauthorized charges. That’s the best way to monitor activity on your financial accounts. Once you have your report, look for inaccurate information or unknown accounts.