Phishing and Internet Identity Theft

Phishing Attempts are Becoming a Major Problem!

Internet related crime; specifically identity theft is becoming a rising problem. According to the Federal Trade Commission crimes on the internet have tripled in just one year!

It's a frightening thought for all computer users that doing anything online could put you at risk for identity theft.

What is Phishing?

Phishing is the number one way to become a victim of identity theft. This is the practice of pretending to be a company that a computer user can trust in order to get that users' personal information. This information can range from user names and passwords to credit cards and social security numbers.

How it Works

Generally what happens is a person (the victim) receives a bogus email. The email stresses an urgent action from the person reading the email. Phishers use large corporate companies like PayPal, EBay, banks and even department stores as their target since most people have accounts with these companies.

Common reasons for this urgent action in phishing emails include:

• Account cancellation if the user does not log in
• The need to update invalid or expired credit cards
• Free product offer for just logging in
• Special one-day sales
• Fake fraud attempts that require the user to change their password

The phisher then includes a link to a website in the email that you must click on to set your account straight or receive the offer. But like the email, the website is fake too! It may look exactly like the real website but trust me, it isn't!

Any information you give on this fake website then goes to the phishers and they can use this information to steal your identity and access your account.

Other Means Used

Phishers are becoming increasingly smarter. They have learned that some people recoginize these fake emails and delete them before clicking on the link within them.

What Phishers are now doing is attaching malware, spyware, keyloggers, trojans and other forms of malicous code to emails that will track your movements and keystrokes even if you don't click on the link within the fake email.

Protecting Yourself

There are several things you can do to protect yourself from these phishing scams:

• Never click on a link from an email that asks you to update your account information. More likely than not its a phishing attempt
• Update your account information by calling the company directly or by logging into the site by typing the sites' web address into your browser
• Call or forward the fake email to the company who is being targeted. Most large companies nowadays have a system in place to deal with this issue. They will thank you for alerting them to the new phishing attempt.
• Scan your computer on a daily or weekly basis using one of the programs I recommend

My Final Thoughts

Phishing attempts are becoming a huge problem world wide. This method is the number one way to become an identity theft victim.

If you don't want to become a victim you must become proactive, know what a phishing attempt looks like, and know how to stop it.

Don't forget though... simply deleting the email will not solve your problem if the phisher is using the latest phishing methods. In order to be fully protected, you must have at least one spyware removal program on your computer that will actively protect your computer from malware being installed.

More Information

To learn more about identity theft read my article on identity theft and protection.