In this article, we will discuss phishing emails. Those are emails sent from criminals in order to receive or gain access to your personal information. They need this information to commit identity fraud, gather your financial information, and a whole host of other unsavory business. They can try to fool you by pretending to be a trusted source like TBC-Hosting. Phishing emails will often encourage you to take some sort of action on your hosting account like update your address or credit card number. Below we will provide a few tips that will help you to identify a phishing email and make it stop coming to your account.

Phishing scam protection: how to tell if an email is legitimate

Lots of phishing emails have links to pages posing as legitimate site pages. These pages will usually pose as portals where you would supply sensitive information such as the official login page of TBC-Hosting. However, these pages will instead send any and all information you have supplied on the page to those scammers and criminals.

Fortunately, it is quite easy to identify which emails are real and are from trustworthy sources, and which are sent from suspicious companies/individuals. Follow the guideline down below to learn how you can find out if the emails are legitimate:

• Any email requesting that you take action on an account or update user information will be accompanied by a request that you submit a ticket or call us if you have any questions.
• Anytime you receive an email requesting that you log into your account, do not click any login links included in the email. Instead, visit My TBC-Hosting directly and log into your account from there. This tip can be used to protect yourself from any online phishing scam, not just TBC-Hosting.
• Never submit confidential information in a form embedded within an email message.
• Before clicking any link within an email, hover your cursor over the link to verify that the destination URL correlates to the destination you’re expecting. The page that will open if you click on the link should appear on the mouse hover or on the bottom of the window. The link should match the description provided but if you are dealing with a phishing email, you will notice the link shown in the mouseover is different.
• TBC-Hosting will never ask you to provide your password, credit card number, or any other personal information directly through email.
• TBC-hosting will only ever email the address that you have provided in your TBC Portal. Check which address you have received correspondence on.
• If we ever do request information or action from you, we will do so within our support ticket system. The most secure way to reply to us is to go directly to My TBC-Hosting, login, and submit your reply directly on our website.

How can you keep my login information secure

When you are logging into the real TBC-Hosting website, there will be a padlock validation icon in your browser bar. You can click on this bar to see the connection details that TBC-Hosting’s credentials have been verified. If you followed the link to the website that is pretending to be TBC-Hosting, there will be no padlock which means that the website you are on is not secured and your personal information is not being protected.

What can you do if you are still unsure of an email

You can always contact our support team in case you are still unsure if you are on the right website. TBC-Hosting’s staff is available day or night to answer your questions, and this certainly includes account security questions as well as phishing scam protection.