What is “Phishing,” and How Do I Prevent It?
What is “Phishing,” and How Can I Prevent it?
“Phishing” - a play on the word “fishing” is a term used to describe an Internet scam that continues to grow in popularity and frequency over the years despite increased security and awareness of the scam. Thousands of people fall for phishing attacks every year in the United States alone by not being quite aware enough when it comes to their e-mails and websites that they visit.
How does Phishing work?
Phishing typically begins with an e-mail from your bank or business that you do business with - or rather, it looks like an e-mail from your business or bank. In actuality, what you have received is a cleverly-disguised e-mail from a scam artist that may even include the actual logo for the bank or business in the e-mail and sound like it is written from them.
These e-mails will typically tell you that there is a problem with your account, or that you may be cancelled soon, or that they need you to act immediately for some reason or another to verify your identity or who you are. They will include a link to a website for you to click on to enter your account information, or social security number, pin number, or other sensitive information in order to “verify” your identity. Some of these e-mails can even seem quite threatening, accusing you of illegal or illicit activity and threatening you with action if you do not comply by entering your information online or replying to the e-mail. Once a person clicks on this link and enters their information, rather than their actual bank or business getting that information, the scam artists who set up that site now have access to it and can go clean out your real bank account or steal your identity for other nefarious purposes. The website they take you to may look like a legitimate website URL as well, such as Bank0fAmerica.com - Did you catch that? Probably not, but Bank (Zero)f America.com isn’t likely to be caught by most other people either.
How Can I Protect Myself From Phishing Attacks?
There are several things you can think and do to keep yourself from falling prey to a phishing attack in the future:
- Never, EVER ‘verify’ your account information when an e-mail asks you to.
- Upgrade your web browser
- Keep your antivirus/antispyware software up to date
If you receive an e-mail asking you to verify your account information and it includes a link for you to click on, do not click it. It should be extremely rare for a bank to ever ask you via e-mail to login to your bank account online, in fact, most banks will never ask you to do that. If you get an e-mail requesting any kind of information from you, call your bank instead and speak with them. If the e-mail was legitimate (unlikely), you can give them the information they need over the phone.
Most of the newer web browsers such as Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox include sophisticate software that will warn you when you visit a website that is probably not legitimate like bank0famerica.com.
Many of the better antivirus and antispyware programs include an extra level of protection that will also warn you when a website you are visiting is suspicious. One of the programs that include this protection is avgfree.
The numbers of people falling prey to these attacks surprisingly does not seem to be decreasing with education, which has many experts baffled, but now that you are informed, you can be safer and notify your friends and family to keep them safe as well.
