What is Phishing

Have you ever received an email that sounds like, "Dear Mr. John, we are from the Trust International Bank. Due to our upgrade of our recent system database, we would like you to click on this subscription form below to access to a new customer's information form. This form enables us to collect the most recent information of our customers to update our database system. Thank you very much."

Following the text is a website showing a blue hyperlink that links you to another website with a nicely setup interface with a form asking you for all sorts of information from your mother's maiden name to your current credit card number.

Credit card number? Now this is something that you must be careful of. Most phishers obtain current credit card numbers and customer's personal information by fooling victims this way, so that they fall into the trap unknowingly.

Phishing started earlier in the AOL phishing incident. In a similar scenario as the above, phishers pose as an AOL staff then obtain information from accounts by fooling unwary customers. By doing that, phishers get access to the accounts, thus using it for spamming or other illegal purposes.

To date, many financial institutions suffer from phishing activities used towards their customers by phishers. They target account holders as they can get access to gain account information to steal. Reports saying that more and more emails using eBay, PayPal, E-Gold, MSN, and other large companies to target victims. Image files, compared to text files are used to evade anti-phishing softwares.

It does not take too much effort to stop the phishing activity from spreading. Companies already agreed to work with financial institutions to terminal phishing sites. Efforts are still mainly from the public, urging people to report phishing sites when encountered. Educating internet users to identify which sites are safe to reveal personal data via simple mistakes such as PayPla instead of PayPal, or bogus email addresses such as google.com@iamaphisher.com will make a big difference too.

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