Have you heard the word phishing? What does it mean? According to Microsoft, phishing is a type of deception designed to steal your valuable personal data, such as credit card numbers, Windows Live ID’s, other account data and passwords or other information. Wikipedia defines it as a criminally-fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
Phishers usually use emails to send fraudulent messages to people to trick them into giving personal information. Such emails will look like it was sent by your bank or by the Internal Revenue Service. If you get an email from your bank asking you fill out forms in email messages that ask for your personal financial information, just ignore the email or might as well delete it. All financial institutions won’t ask you for your personal financial information using an email.
- Never read, respond or open e-mails from any unknown source that requires you to fill out personal, financial and confidential information.
- Don’t click any link on an email message to open any web page. Such links may look like valid links, such as https://www.bankofamerica.com, but, when you click on the link, it might take you to a scam website which is, http://109.22.99.99. This is a very common strategy used by scammers/phishers.
- When using credit card online or filling out confidential information, always make sure that the website you’re at is using a secure connection (https://)
- If you log-in to a site, always remember to sign out when you are done, most importantly, if you are using a public terminal.
- Create strong passwords by using a combination of letters and numbers.
- Always use up-to-date virus protection software and consider using spyware detection programs.
- Equip your computer with either a software or hardware firewall.
- Upgrade to the latest version of your favorite browser. Microsoft has released IE8 and Mozilla Firefox, which has version 3.0.10 for their latest release. Both browsers now have strong security features when properly configured.
- You can report phishing emails and websites to the following :
- Federal Trade Commission
- reportphishing@antiphishing.com
- FBI Internet Fraud Complaint Center
Stay Safe. Happy Computing.
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