Email phishing attacks are improving.

I mean the attackers are improving. They’re wising up to the fact that actual financial institutions and social networks send emails that are (at least mostly) intelligible, and adjusting their approach accordingly.

You still see plenty of phishing emails with atrocious spelling and weird grammar bordering on word salad, but there is a growing trend toward messages that could be mistaken for legitimate communications, even by someone who is well-informed. As potential victims become more sophisticated, so do the criminals.

One way to defeat phishing attacks is to set yourself up to never use links at all. For every single site you log into – financial institutions, credit cards, social networks, online shopping – create a bookmark in your web browser, and get in the habit of always using that link to log into the website.

That way, if you get an email that looks like it might be real, instead of clicking on a link (or even spending time wondering if you should or not), simply open your web browser and use your already-created bookmark to log into the website of whomever the email purported to come from. If there’s a real message or problem, you’ll find out about it there.