The more respectable online casino operators take all the measures they can to ensure a safe and secure gaming environment. However, these efforts do nothing to stop hackers from making their attempts of breaking into accounts and divulging sensitive personal and financial information. These days, it is not uncommon to receive an email that looks as if was sent from a casino you do business with, but is indeed from a criminal looking to compromise your player account. This is a common internet scam known as phishing.
Sometimes these messages originate from what appears to be a valid casino email account. In most cases, the tone of the message is urgent, making it seem as if you need to act fast before some sort of action taken against you. Almost always, these spoofed emails try to persuade you into clicking on a link, which then redirects you to rogue website where you are prompted to enter the login credentials for your online casino account. Th sole purpose of this scam is to steal your information to commit fraud or full fledged identity theft.
Identifying Phishing Bait
Phishing is a very serious crime that poses a direct threat to your identity and financial assets. Fortunately, avoiding this scam is quite easy. Just like most threats, the best way to deal with this one is prevention. Below we have provided a few tips to help you identify phishing emails:
Urgent Tone - As we touched on above, phishing emails often have a strong sense of urgency and portray that there is a major problem with your account. They will typically threaten to cancel your account if you do not respond with the requested information.
HTML Links – The second big indicator is the request to click on a provided link in
the email to confirm your account details.
Suspicious URLs - Some phishing emails have to be observed very closely in order to distinguish them from legitimate messages. This is because they often look identical to what you would receive from online casino operator. You can often tell the real from the fake by looking at the embedded links in the email. It could be something as simple as the inclusion or exclusion of “www” attached to the website URL.
click here to see most Popular PagesPoor Grammar - While their plans are often cleverly concocted, con artists often make obvious spelling or grammatical errors that give them away to the trained eye. These errors are sometimes done purposely to bypass spam filters but could actually keep you from making a tremendous mistake.
Protecting Yourself Against Phishing
Likewise, there are a few simple steps that can help you protect yourself against phishing scams. Here are some important tips that work every time:
Avoid Clicking Links – If you believe the email you are reading could be spam or a phishing trap, never click on any link in the body of the message.
Do Not Opt Out – Never opt out or unsubscribe to a suspicious email. Spoofers often give you these options simply to formulate a list of active email accounts.
Keep up with Your Casino Account – You can protect yourself from phishing just by knowing the status of your account. A reliable casino operator will provide an interface that makes it simple to know what is going on with your account at all times.
