How to protect yourself from phishing

Today’s digital world offers huge opportunities and our lives are becoming ever more connected. But in any society there is a darker side and criminal activity. Raising awareness of online risks helps to guard against the dangers and preserve our freedom.

 

To promote cyber safety, we support people using online services by protecting their data.

 

 

What is phishing?

Phishing attacks are among the most common cyber attacks. Every year, our experts identify more than 42,000 phishing attacks in France and overcome around half of them for our customers.

Phishing: the fraudulent attempt to gain sensitive information such as passwords or credit card details, by disguising as a trustworthy entity through an email, SMS or phone call.

 

 

Our expertise at your disposal

As a leading telecoms operator serving both businesses and consumers, we have a head start: we analyse 50 billion cyber events every day and have built up a database of more than 550 million threats that we classify according to their type. These threats are analysed by our experts in order to identify them and protect our customers from compromising their personal data.

In 2018, this customer commitment resulted in closing 200 malicious sites per day, helping to make the internet more secure.

 

 

 

Discover some useful tips for guarding against cyber attacks:

  • Is it usual for this sender to contact me by email?
     
  • Is the message something I would expect to receive from this sender? 
     
  • Am I being asked form confidential information such as a password or bank PIN?
     
  • Does the message contain spelling or grammar mistakes or incongruous or informal language?
     
  • Is the sender insisting the message is urgent or talking about a potential windfall?
     
  • Is the sender’s email address incorrectly spelt (eg Luxenburg instead of Luxembourg) or different from the expected entity?
     
  • Is the message a chain letter, a call for help or a viral video? If the message was sent by a friend or loved one, did they originate the message or forward it on?

 

 

What should you do if you fall victim to an attack?

If you are the victim of a cyber attack you should act as quickly as possible in order to block it or obtain compensation (in French).

In the event cyber criminals are posing as Orange employees, please report the email to the following address: abuse@orange.fr

 

 

Good to know

no trusted organisation would ever ask you to divulge confidential information via email or SMS. If you are being asked for this information it is likely that it is a phishing attempt.