Phishing scams are becoming more of a problem especially recently, this is where a fake website is set up to try and trick you out of your personal information. Until fairly recently people were only interested in trying to get your bank account details, however now they are commonly also targeting social networking sites such as FaceBook and Myspace.
Phishing is so called because a piece of bait (a website) is used to attract people to give away something of value, in other words it's fishing for the information. A Phisher uses a website to try and trick people into giving out their passwords, credit card numbers or bank account details. Typically this works by the phisher sending out an email asking for your account password to resolve a problem on your account, if you follow the link then it looks just like the real thing. However entering your details here means that you are giving them right to the hands of the fraudsters.
One of the most common phishing scams which affects myspace uses the domain name RNyspace.com, This looks just like myspace when it is in lowercase (rnyspace.com) few people would bother to question this. The site also looks identical to myspace and requests your login details. Whenever logging in you need to be particularly careful that you are doing so on a legitimate website.
Other popular targets of the phishers include online banking services, paypal, and credit card companies. You need to be very cautious when you are entering any of your personal information and make sure that you can trust the website.
Social networking Phishing scams may not seem like a big deal, they only have your login name and limited information, right? Wrong! They also have access to all of your friends which means they could find out pretty much anything they wanted if they are clever enough and prepared to put in enough time. They could also steal your friends details and continue like that.
There is plenty of anti phishing software out there, and it is absolutely vital for anyone that surfs the Internet. The majority of Internet service providers have put in safety measures to try and limit this problem. The latest version of Internet explorer 7 also has an anti phishing feature, however many of these people have discovered ways to get around the anti phishing software.
Some form of phishing protection is needed on your computer, an excellent phishing filter is Firewall Protector which can be downloaded here will also help. A fishing filter is vital to protect your time online!
Of course phishing doesn't just happen on the Internet, phishers may use the phone to ask for your information. If you get a phone call from your bank requesting your personal information then hang up and phone the bank back directly. Your bank should only ask you to verify a few digits from your social security number, and your address.
If you believe that you have been affected by a phishing scam then you should report it to the real company, and also report it to spam@uec.gov so that you can get the word out and stop other people suffering the same fate.
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