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What is Phishing: Definition, Ways of Spotting and Avoiding ItBY: Maya Ballesteros | Category: Technology | Submitted: 2010-09-04 06:59:43
What is Phishing? Phising, a phonetic word play for fishing, is so called because the practice baits you with supposedly legit reasons for you to provide the phiser with personal data. One of the most common examples of phising is an email asking you to confirm a large withdrawal of cash from your bank account. The email will look genuine, the link they ask you to click will take you to what looks like your bank's website and it will ask you to type in personal info, including username and password. The latter is what the criminals are after. They will then use your username and password to access your account and do great damage. Banking account is only one example, phising targets also any account that has something to do with money like eBay, Amazon and PayPal. How to Spot Phishing and Avoid Falling for It * Ways of Addressing Legitimate organizations will know your name and how to appropriately address you in their methods of communication. No real company, especially ones doing business with you will risk losing customers by carelessly addressing you Dear Sir/Madam or Dear Customer. Phishers are usually not privy to information concerning your real name so this is one way to spot them. Some advanced phishers know how to dig for this though so keep your eye open still and scan for more signs. * Language A large number of phishers come from countries where English is not the first language. Some mistakes in spelling and grammar can be a helpful hint of a phisher or scammer in action. Another common mistake is the fact that phishing emails usually read conversational, as opposed to the formal tone business emails are supposed to take. * Unexpected Requests Professional organizations like banks, insurance companies and other companies working with sensitive data are very meticulous and they usually have all your information stored well. For such a company to call or email and ask for personal question is highly unlikely. If this happens you can be sure it is a phishing attempt and you need to call the company to verify that such information is needed. Never relay any sensitive data on the phone when someone calls you - always hang up, call the company and ask. There is close to a hundred percent chance the company never need such info. * Attempts to Panic You The phishers will not back down that easily though. Almost always they will tell lies about emergencies and even get angry when you say you are hanging up to call and verify. Don't let anyone guilt you into giving your personal information. Or panicking you to such an extent that you don't realize you are giving away information you should never give to strangers. * Unfamiliar Business When it is an email from a business you don't remember ever dealing with asking for personal information, it is a scam. When legitimate companies hardly ever ask for such data, why should you give it to companies you are not familiar with? The people behind such emails may simply looking for customers but they do so to find someone else whose email and other data they can sell to spammers. Why provide them with easy money at the expense of your Inbox? * Mistakes Everybody makes mistakes, even scammers who try to copy official websites. There can be some unprofessional signs like bad copywriting (bad grammar, spelling mistakes), slight difference in the logo of the design and layout or the color of same. Another thing you can try to spot is the web address or URL. They want to direct you to their own site but they need you to think you are visiting your usual hang out. So usually it's Googlle, instead of Google. A better phisher will redirect you to what seems like a sub domain of the official website, something like authorize-google.com. Never click on links sent by unknown email address, even if the URL seems legit. Enter it into a search engine box instead. You will usually find that the results that come back will include authorize-google scam. This means someone else has been duped and posted his or her review on the Net. * Common Phrases Remember that no real companies will ask you to verify your account with a link in an email. This is only done by websites looking to weed out spammers and they will only ask you to input username and password to their own website. They will never ask you your personal data. Banks and other such companies have no business asking your personal info either. It is already stored in their database, handled only by a 'bot to make sure your transactions go without a hitch. Another phrase phishers usually use is click the link below to.... Never click a link in an email. Always type in the known address yourself into the browser and then use the Search feature. Article Source: http://www.writearticles.org/ About Author / Additional Info: Comments on this article: (0 comments so far)
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