What is Phishing? How do I protect myself from it?

What is Phishing?

The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has.
 

What can I do to protect myself?

The best way to protect yourself is simply be skeptical. If you receive an e-mail from a place you do business with stating they have lost your information, do not be afraid to contact that business directly! Another good way to see if this is a scam or not would be to view the source code of the e-mail.

If the e-mail says you need to go to EBay to update your card information, view the code of the HTML in the e-mail to see if it REALLY is taking you to EBay.

In most e-mail readers viewing source is as simple as right clicking and selecting "View Source".

An example of what to look for would be:
< a href="http://208.234.8.187/custreg.html > BobsVisa.com < /a>

Note that it looks like you are going to BobsVisa.com. Find out where your really going.

In the E-mail itself without viewing source the previous line would look like:

BobsVisa.com

Try viewing source on this page and looking for BobsVisa.com to find out where it really takes you.


Created on Friday, December 03, 2004

Last Modified on Tuesday, November 15, 2005.