#SecureSummer – Phishing Emails – emails pretending to be legitimate travel companies – 4 of 5
Click Safe. Travel smart.
If you’ve booked a holiday this summer – stay alert, and double check every email from your travel company, accommodation or airline to make sure it’s not a phishing email. That email could be a phishing email.
What is phishing?
Phishing is a type of scam when cyber criminals try to trick you into revealing sensitive information like passwords, credit card numbers, personal information or bank details.
A common type of phishing is to pretend to be a well-known company so that you will trust an email, text or phone call and reveal your information.
Scammers send convincing emails that appear to come from legitimate travel companies, asking for confirmation, payment, or even login credentials. These phishing emails can lead to stolen data or financial loss.
How can I stay safe from phishing scams?
Here’s some top tips to stay safe around Phishing emails:
- Are you expecting an email? If you’ve just paid for a holiday online, it’s normal to receive an email from the company to confirm the holiday or send a receipt or invoice. This is an expected email. If you receive an email out of the blue from a travel company, this is unexpected.
- Never click links or download attachments from unexpected emails. If in doubt, go directly to the companies official website to verify bookings.
- Check the email address of whoever sent the email. Do you recognise it? Can you search your previous, trusted emails to see if they’ve sent you an email before?
- Even if you do trust the sender, are you expecting an email from then and does it sound like them? This one can be hard to work out as cyber criminals can use AI to write emails that sound very legitimate and in the style of the company the are pretending to be.
- Be suspicious – If anything doesn’t feel quite right, it probably isn’t.
How can I learn more about staying safe from phishing scams?
You can learn more about Phishing by reading our EasyRead Easy-Read-Scam-Spot_F.pdf.
Enrol with My.Lead to learn more about keeping your accounts safe online
Or watching our BSL video on Staying safe from phishing scams
Here’s some other advice about phishing scams: Phishing: Spot and report scam emails, texts, websites and… – NCSC.GOV.UK
Or keep an eye on our social media as we share more top tips this summer.
Follow us on Facebook , Instagram @leadscotland or LinkedIn.
➡️Click for the next post in our #SecureSummer series
⬅️Click to go back to the first #SecureSummer overview post
For organisations
Lead Scotland are committed to delivering high quality, accessible, and free digital skills and cyber training, especially to disabled people, carers, marginalised groups, and organisations that work with these groups. Let us know what you are interested in and we can organise a session (or more) to make sure you, or the people you support, are safe online. Register your interest in this online form.
Or get in touch for a chat by emailing us at cyberproject@lead.org.uk
