Don't Get Hooked

Phishing!
Don't you mean “fishing”?
No…if you haven’t heard of “Phishing” yet, it won’t be long before you do. “Phishing is a technique used to gain personal information for the purpose of identity theft, using fraudulent e-mail messages that appear to come from legitimate businesses”. These messages look authentic and are designed to make recipients reveal personal information such as bank passwords. Here is how it works. An email is sent from what “appears” to be a legitimate company such as eBay, AOL, Yahoo, Citibank etc. These scammers package their email in such away that it looks exactly like the company’s home page (these people are good). The email might inform you that your account could be suspended if you do not re-update your account information. In some cases people have been asked to give credit card information, social security numbers, ATM pins, birth date and mother’s maiden name. Statistics say that because these emails look so authentic, up to 20% of the recipients respond to them and suffer some sort of lose. Popular targets are users of online banking and auction sites such as eBay. In March of 2005, US Senator Patrick Leahy filed a bill called the Anti-Phishing Act. It proposes that “Phishers” (I guess that’s what you would call them) be subject to fines of up to $250,000 and jail time of up to five years. Anti Phishing websites are popping up everywhere: www.anti-phishing.org gives daily news from the net about phishing; www.millersmiles.co.uk lists a collection of phishing alerts and reports; and if you would like to see an actual sample of phishing go to www.fightidentitytheft.com/paypal_scam.html . Email is great… but just don’t get hooked by it.