Phishing

Phishing takes it name from fishing for passwords or credit cards, spelt in a hacker style. It now includes trying to steal access to someone’s e-mails, money from their bank account  or their balance held in their Paypal account etc.

The scam fraudsters send out large amounts of e-mails to a wide variety of different addresses. The e-mails look genuine and will have the logo of the real company and will generally state that the company is updating their records and could you please complete some personal information for them. Needless to say the information requested will include your password and once they know this you can wave goodbye to any funds you had in your account.

To avoid being the victim of a phishing scam giving out your details to a phisher you should never click on a link in an e-mail, because a link claiming to take you to Paypal might take you to a fake site which still says Paypal.com in the address bar and looks remarkably similar to the genuine Paypal site but whose real aim is to ask you to enter your personal details which the thieves can then use at the real site to empty your account.

One way of identifying an e-mail phishing scam is if you cannot click and highlight the text in the e-mail because the scammer has sent you an image of the text in order to avoid your e-mail scanner which might detect that it was not legitimate. Another giveaway in some e-mails is the misspellings or poor grammar used.

It is also important not to open any attachments that you receive from an unknown source as this is one of the most common ways that a virus is spread and the scammer may be trying to infect your computer with software that will steal your personal or passwords.

Having up to date security protection for you computer is another way of protecting yourself. If you do not want to pay for antivirus software or spyware detection software visit our freebies page and download some defences for your computer now.

Remember that generally companies such as Paypal or you credit card company will not send out e-mails asking for personal details instead they will wait until you log in before telling you of a problem. If you receive a message and are unsure if the message is genuine or not contact the sender first - either from another link or by phoning them direct, don’t use any numbers quoted in the e-mail in case you end up speaking to the thieves and accidentally give them all the information verbally instead of by e-mail that they were looking for!

If you think you have been the victim of a phishing scam then it is important that you contact your bank or company immediately and alert them to what has happened. If you are quick they should be able to sort it out for you and whatever happens remember to change your passwords and other details so that the fraudsters cannot strike twice.

For the latest information on phishing and other scams refer to the Metropolitan police web site or the Anti-phishing working group.

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