What is Social Engineering?

Social engineering is a technique used by scammers to obtain confidential information through trickery, rather than by technical means, such as malware. The most common form of social engineering on the internet is phishing, where a hacker creates a website, or sends an email impersonating a bank, or some other legitimate company a person deals with, in order to trick a person into divulging usernames and passwords.

Protecting Yourself

The best rule to remember is to never ever give anybody your personal information. No bank representative, or any legitimate entity is ever likely to ask you for your password, so do not divulge it. Be extremely careful with who you give important personal details, like birthdates, social-security numbers, or addresses to.

Be careful with the data you share with others on places like Facebook, or personal blogs. This data is often publicly available, and can give the people who scam you the information to seem legitimate.