Phishing: Examples and its prevention methods

Phishing is a criminal and fraudulently activity carried out on computers to acquire sensitive information such as try get hold of a person’s user name, password and credit card details. The most common way that phishers will attempt to get this information is by email or instant messaging and often directs users to enter details at a website. Normally, PayPal, eBay and online bank are phisher’s common targets. The damages cause by the phishing is that the victims may incur the financial loss due to denial access to the email.

There are some examples of the phishing:

The email looks like a real Citicorp email and the link in the email contains the name "Citibank". However, it has nothing to do with Citibank. To see the real link in an email message, right click on the text and choose “properties” from the context menu. To see an example of a faked link, try to log on to http://www.microsoft.com

This is an eBay phishing email includes the eBay logo in an attempt to gain credibility. The email notes that the billing information in the account is error and the eBay member need to login and verify the charges.

There are some methods use to prevent the phishing such as never reply to email that request your personal information or financial information. You should be suspicious when one sends you any email to ask you update your personal information or confirm it. Besides that, use anti virus and anti spam software and update them all regularly to ensure that you are blocking from new virus. The anti spam software can be use to analysis the content within the message or in urls and delete the phishing mail while the normal email gets filtered through to your inbox. Another way to prevent the phishing is review credit card and bank account statement regularly to ensure that no unauthorized transactions have been made. If your statement is late, call your credit card company or bank to confirm your billing address and account balances.