Phishing Mails are an attempt to gather personal or sensitive Information like your login credentials or credit card details. They might appear as a regular email from a person you know. These Emails sometimes contain attachments or a link to a document.
One of the ways in which it is done is an email is sent from a person you know with a link to a Dropbox File. Something like the picture below-
And more often than not, the person who sent you this email has no Idea it was sent. Having said that some emails might be genuine like a person sharing a Document through Dropbox. But it is always good to be safe rather than regret later on. So there are two key things which one should do in case they receive an email of this kind-
- Before Opening the Document, if possible contact the Sender and make sure it was sent by him.
- If it is a link to a Document, check whether the link is a Tiny URL. This can be checked by hovering the mouse over the link. In case it is a tiny url, there is every likelihood that it is a spam. Then the Email should be deleted ASAP.
In case you happen to open a document from a phishing email, the first thing you should do is to change the Password for your Account and make sure you set a Strong Password for it.