Phishing Scams Even Fool Tech Nerds—Here’s How to Avoid Them

You know not to click on links in sketchy emails. Everybody knows that. And yet, people fall for these phishing attacks all the time. Case in point: The FBI suspects a phishing email is how the Russian hackers who were indicted this week got into Yahoo. Ditto for the breach of the Democratic National Committee, and the Sony Pictures hack. In fact, there’s currently a Gmail phishing scam going around that even super savvy techies are falling for.

Phishing scams work by tricking you into clicking on a link or attachment that either infects your machine with malware or takes you to a page that looks totally legit, but isn’t and is designed to steal your private information. According to the the Anti-Phishing Working Group, 100,000 new phishing attacks get reported every month, and thousands of people fall for them. But you are smart. You can increase your chances of avoiding phishing scams if you follow these three steps and, above all, remember that when it comes to your email you can’t really trust anything.