How to Avoid Phishing Scams
by Frank Jovine on 05/01/2009 in Security, Security Tips
This year is turning out to be the year of scams, fraud and hoaxes. These cyber criminals are pulling no punches and are using social networks to market their misleading applications also known as scareware.
The most popular method being used today is phishing. Phishing is essentially an online con game. These tech-savvy con artists use SPAM, malicious Web sites, email messages and instant messages to trick people into divulging sensitive information, such as bank and credit card accounts.
It’s getting tougher for these cyber criminals to dupe people. There are many technologies that prevent spam from getting to your email inbox. Many email providers are using spam filters and blacklisting known spammers. These technologies are not 100% full proof.
How to Identify a Phishing Scam:
- Phishers look like legitimate companies, but they use email to request personal information and direct recipients to respond through malicious web sites.
- Phishers use scare tactics or urgent requests to entice recipients to respond.
- The phish sites can look remarkably like legitimate sites because they tend to use the copyrighted images from legitimate sites.
- Requests for confidential information via email or Instant Message tend to not be legitimate.
- Fraudulent messages are often not personalized and may share similar properties like details in the header and footer.
How to Keep Safe:
- Check to see if the site has a toll free phone number.
- Google the product or service they’re trying to sell you. You may find some valuable information.
- Download the Web of Trust tool to proactively detect if a website is rated as dangerous.
- If you never heard of the product, more than likely it could be a scam.
How to Report a Phishing Scam:
- You can usually send a copy to abuse@DOMAIN.com where DOMAIN.com signifies the company to which you are directing the email.
- If in the United States, you can also forward a copy to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) using the address spam@uce.gov.
- If you aren’t in the U.S. and the abuse@DOMAIN.com address bounces, you can visit the real website by using a pre-existing bookmark in your browser or typing the known good URL (link) into your browser.
Surf safe and be smart!
Kikolani
May 1st, 2009
This is great advice… phishers are getting wiser with cloaked links and other official looking emails and authentic sites to steal your information from you. It is essential to be wary of any outside service asking for your user name and password.
~ Kristi
Frank J
May 1st, 2009
Kristi,
I love the cloak comment, not many people know about cloaking. Kudos!!!
Salwa
May 4th, 2009
Great article and advice on how to protect your self with phishing. I get this types of email that request my personal information every now and again, so it is very important for one to be alert about different types of scams online so you can protect your self.
Marie Frabutt
May 4th, 2009
A lot more know about the cloaking tactics of the online criminal. My life mate has even received letters from the FBI, when I contacted the nears FBI office to investigate the letter, no one in the bureau had an knowledge of the letter but they were happy to get the email and run their own investigation into the matter.
So yes cloaking by online criminals is alive and well. Like I said to you before no one need be a victim, it only takes a few minutes to surf the net to see who is on the blacklist on internet companies that are pretending to be or deliver something they can not.
Let your fingers do the googling to find the sites and investigate before you invest. You could save yourself more than just money. Some of the scams come with a prison sentence.
Frank J
May 5th, 2009
Marie,
Cloaking is an old method still used today. It’s easy to catch if you do a little homework.