HOW TO AVOID BECOMING A PHISHING VICTIM

You may have heard of phishing (pronounced “fishing”). That’s when some
malicious attacker tries to steal your personal information by
pretending to be your bank, one of your online stores, or your Internet
Service Provider. These thieves are “phishing” for your information to
use it as their own.

Almost every day at InfoWest, we see examples of phishing attacks
against InfoWest customers. Very often these attacks appear as an email
message that looks like it came from InfoWest, requesting account login
and password information. These malicious phishers are sophisticated
enough that they find ways to sneak past junk mail filters.

It gets worse. Have you ever heard the term “spear phishing”?

That’s when the thieves know something about you and use it to pretend
to be legitimate, targeting an individual or group very specifically.
Because they seem to know what they’re talking about, and may mention
names or events that the individual or group knows about. It lends
credibility to their request for information. It sounds so real.

Today at InfoWest, we have received reports that not only have email
messages claiming to be from InfoWest been received by InfoWest users
(the messages were NOT from InfoWest–we NEVER ask for password or
account information over email), but SOMEONE IS CALLING INFOWEST USERS
ON THE PHONE and pretending to be InfoWest. That’s right. They’re
impersonating InfoWest and using the telephone to target InfoWest
customer information.

DON’T FALL FOR IT! IF YOU EVER HAVE ANY QUESTION if the person you are
talking to really is from InfoWest, ask them politely for their
extension number and say you will call them back immediately.

DO NOT call a phone number you get over the phone. Instead, use a
trusted source and look up the InfoWest phone number. Our contact
information is pubished on our web site at:

http://www.infowest.com/contact-us/general-info/

This way you know that YOU initiated the telephone call, and that you
called what you KNOW is the legitimate InfoWest telephone number. You
should then be able to reconnect to whomever you were speaking with
using their extension.

REMEMBER: InfoWest doesn’t need to ever ask you for your password, not
with email, not over the phone, because it is stored in our secure
database. When YOU call US, we may ask you to verify your password so
we can be sure that you are who you say you are. (Yes, we sometimes have
to be a little suspicious of identity theft too!)

That should be the ONLY time you ever need to give us your password.
And you should ONLY do it when YOU initiate the contact, contacting US
using information you ALREADY have and trust.

On the Internet, sometimes it pays to be skeptical and suspicious
whenever someone is asking for personal information.

If you have any questions or concerns on this topic, please give us a
call or send us a message. (Or if you have any other customer support
issues, we are ready and waiting to assist.)