Phishing is a type of deception designed to steal your valuable personal data, such as credit card numbers, Windows Live IDs, other account data and passwords, or other information.

You might see a phishing scam:

• In e-mail messages, even if they appear to be from a coworker or someone you know.

• On your social networking Web site.

• On a fake Web site that accepts donations for charity.

• On Web sites that spoof your familiar sites using slightly different Web addresses, hoping you won't notice.

• In your instant message program.

• On your cell phone or other mobile device.


Often phishing scams rely on placing links in e-mail messages, on Web sites, or in instant messages that seem to come from a service that you trust, like your bank, credit card company, or social networking site.


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What does a phishing scam look like?
Phishing e-mail messages take a number of forms. They might appear to come from your bank or financial institution, a company you regularly do business with, such as Microsoft, or from your social networking site.

In the United States, recent bank mergers have created new opportunities for scammers. For more information, read FTC Consumer Alert: Bank Failures, Mergers and Takeovers: A "Phish-erman’s Special."

Spear phishing is a targeted form of phishing in which an e-mail message might look like it comes from your employer, or from a colleague who might send an e-mail message to everyone in the company, such as the head of human resources or IT. For details, see Spear phishing: highly targeted scams.

Phishing mail often includes official-looking logos and other identifying information taken directly from legitimate Web sites, and it may include convincing details about your personal information that scammers found on your social networking pages.

The main thing phishing e-mail messages have in common is that they ask for personal data, or direct you to Web sites or phone numbers to call where they ask you to provide personal data.

Nice post born2shine! Good info.

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It's a good idea to protect your computer against phishing scams with firewall security and a antivirus software. It can happen to anyone.

I am sure this is somewhat similar to identity theft.

Good timing Born2Shine, these guys are incredibly imaginative. I've seen some fairly experienced people fall for phishing scams.

I might add that, besides making liberal use of the delete button, if there is a possibility that an email comes in that I think I might need I go to the site directly from a saved link in my Bookmarks and check around. If there is anything I need to know, it should show up there.

... just never click any links. Even if it is from your boss.

You can also verify first - email them and ask if they sent such and such an email on such and such a date containing info about such and such.

If you share your computer, it would also be wise to make sure those emails are fully deleted, not just moved to another folder. You wouldn't want someone more naive than you coming along later and checking out those phishing links.

Tula

Nice contribution to the forum!

The thing about phishing scams is that they prey upon our own bad computing practices more than things like anti-virus, anti-trojan and weak firewalls.

We... open the emails.
We... click on the links.
We... surf the net signing up at stupid sites.
We... download unknown files.

So, for the most part, it's about training yourself (AND anyone else allowed to use your computer) to act responsibly while online because there are some not very nice people out there.

Tula

This was taken from an email I sent out to my members:

I actually did not plan on sending out any emails today, but something happened to me not that long ago that was very disturbing. I was on Monster.com a few weeks ago looking for a good web developer for a website I'm working on that will be very big!(I'll tell you more about that in the next newsletter). As I was looking through some of the resumes, I saw a few good contacts, so I emailed them letting them know to give me a call. As I logged out of my account, I went over to Yahoo to check myemail as I seem to do every five minutes. In my inbox was a email that came from Monster.com. I opened the email. Long story short, it was another company stating that they liked my experience and that they were looking for people to serve as account holders, cashing their checks and sending them totheir over seas company. Because I review a lot of different money making schemes, I felt the obligation to follow through. In the end they sent me an actual check from CitiBank with my name on it. I was absolutely amazed. In four days I had a check in my hand for $4,213.18.

The company, which was based somewhere in eastern Europe, saidthat I could keep $400 for depositing the money in my account and wire them the balance. At this point I knew I had to follow through with this, so my plan was to deposit the money in my account, let it sit, and see what would happen. 5 days went by, and the check actually cleared! I was shocked! At this point I knew I had to notify the bank about what was going on. A few days later the bank sent the check back letting me know that check was bogus even though it had already cleared a few days before. I found out after-wards that this was a carefully crafted phishing scam that took advantage of people looking for jobs, and got them in a whole heap of trouble. After these unsuspecting people wired the money to these companies overseas, a few days later the check would bounce and they either ended up in jail or in a state of financial crisis. The moral of this is that anyone could become a victim. So the best thing to do is use our common sense in these situations. Please make SURE you forward this page to everyone you know! This will save a lot of people from being scammed by this cleverly crafted phishing scam.

Pretty scary that some companies can have that much control.

Just had another phishing scam email from Chase Bank wanting my personal account information. Delete! Delete! Delete!