5 ways to protect yourself from phishing attacks

Phishing attacks -- online trolling for personal information in order to raid your financial accounts -- are soaring. According to cyber-security experts, phishing attacks jumped 57 percent and have proven to be exceptionally costly, with the average attack resulting in $5.9billion in stolen funds, according to a survey of 2013.

There are still 5 simple ways to catch a phishing attempt before it catches you. Specifically:

Don't click. If your bank or credit card company or facebook sends a warning message saying that your account has been compromised and you need to click through an emailed link to "verify your account information," don't. Banks and credit card companies don't communicate that way. If there's a problem with a bank or credit card account, they'll call you.

Go direct. If you get one of these emails and are worried that there may be a real problem with your account, open up a new browser window, go directly to your bank site and sign in there. Chances are, you'll see something along the lines of: "(Your bank) DOES NOT send emails instructing you to click on a link to enter your personal information." When you sign on without trouble and there's no other message from your bank saying that your account is compromised, you know that it's not. Delete the email that caused you to worry, but remember it -- and the fact that it was a scam -- for next time.Same applies for social-media.

Don't try to "win" anything. Phishing is done with more than emails. Contests are big: "Win a free iPad!" or "Get a $500 Target Gift Card!" The come-ons are all over the web. All you have to do supposedly to get this awesome swag is click on a link that is likely to take you to a toxic site. Increasingly, these toxic sites embed a virus into your computer that allows the crook to capture your every keystroke. That means it gets all your passwords and user IDs for your bank and brokerage accounts. You know you're really not going to get something for nothing, right? So don't pretend you will. When you see the word "free," think "danger." Don't go there. In social media like facebook, people are attracted towards few funny tricks of hackers like 'Click here to get 1000likes to your pic, click here to change your FACEBOOK theme color and so on', which are the traps.

Don't panic. The other brilliant scam that can pull you into the vortex of a toxic site is the pop-up warning: "Your computer has been compromised! Click here to download a security fix!" When you click, you open the gates of your computer to all sorts of nasty viruses. If you don't panic, you won't click and you won't regret it later.

Get security. If you don't have security software on your computer, now is the time to invest in it.