Phishing

Phishing is the fraudulent practice of obtaining someone's personal identification or financial details for the express purpose of engaging in illegal or fraudulent activities. The aim of the fraud perpetrator is extract details that can be used to steal money, make unauthorized purchasers of goods and services or assume someone's identity. Hotmail phishing refers to the range of phishing activities that directly targets hotmail and msn account holders.

The popularity of msn phishing is due largely to the fact that there are millions of account holders to target. The perpetrators of the fraud rely on a very small percentage of uninformed users falling for the trap and giving up their details. These details are then used for exploitation purposes.

The essential approach to hotmail phishing is to send account holders an email message to inform the end user that during recent account maintenance and verification procedures, errors were detected in the account holder's details. The email is dressed up to depict the MSN and hotmail corporate look and feel. Several reasons are given for the potential problem. These include: problems due to a recent change of address, invalid details submitted during the sign up process or the inability to verify details due to an internal server error.

The individual is then encouraged to click on a link contained within the email to rectify the problem. Once the link is clicked a popup window populates the screen indicating the account has been suspended. The end user is then instructed to provide further details to rectify the problem. A billing address form then populates the screen contained within the official looking hotmail window. The end user is then encouraged to complete the form which captures the end users name, address and credit card details. Once submitted, the hotmail fraud perpetrator has successfully performed identity theft and has possession of the account holder's details. Further details and screen shots of the hotmail msn phishing scam can be obtained at: (www.antiphishing.org).

To prevent falling for the hotmail phishing scam, end users are encouraged to ignore all correspondence requesting account holders to update their hotmail accounts. You should only ever log in to an account by directly navigating to the site of interest. Never click on any links embedded in emails. Delete all scam emails or forward them to the relevant authorities to investigate. You should also take further precaution by increasingly your personal computer security by using a firewall, virus software and spyware screener.

Privacy Policy | Contact Us |