Every time I encountered this window while surfing online, I wondered - for perhaps one millisecond - what on earth 'phishing' is. But I would close the window impatiently without ever finding out what it was trying to warn me about.
This week, I finally find out, that phishing is actually fishing! The only difference is that phishing is fishing for an online user's personal information. I know now that the window meant well, by warning me against thieves going after my personal details.
How is this done? Phishing is usually done via emails, sent by scammers to gullible online users of various famous, legitimate website like eBay. These emails falsely claim to be from these websites, and will direct the users to a site that looks like the real one. Then, the users are asked to update personal information like account numbers, credit card numbers and passwords. Through this, the scammers will be able to 'fish' for the information they need for an identity theft.
An example of phishing is that of an imitation of PayPal. This phishing attempt could be detected from the spelling mistakes apparent in the email and also the generic greeting "Dear Accountholder", when a legitimate PayPal email would address the user with his or her real name.
Another example of a phishing incident happened to eBay users, where they received an email requesting a response to an allegedly uncompleted transaction. As soon as the user clicks on the "respond now" button, users were directed to an exact clone of eBay where their personal information was stolen.
So how do we go about preventing phishing from occurring? There are many ways, and the easiest method is to simply report suspicious emails by calling the customer service number of the alleged sender. Also, ensure that we do transactions only with legitimate, trusted websites.
Next, we can have several email address for different functions, for example, one for our online bank accounts, o
ne for friends and family, and one for all the miscellaneous websites. This way, a phishing scam has less chance of entering our inbox, and we'll know which emails are from which sender.
Also, it is always advisable to install the now widely available security software packages and personal firewalls to ensure that there is proper encryption and prevention against other malicious codes that steals personal information from users of the World Wide Web.
Reference links:
- http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/phishing.htm
- http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Prevent-Phishing-Scams&id=1147318
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing
- http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/P/phishing.html
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