Phishing

Phishing is a criminal activity that involves the theft of a person's personal information to use for fraudulent activities. It is usually done through a phishing website. A Phishing website looks like an official website but is in fact a replication. The sole purpose is to use the corporations name to direct people to a fictitious site that is used to steal the personal data of innocent people.

Usually, direction to a phishing site is done through links sent out in an email. It is disguised to look like the original website of a financial institution such as a credit card company, a bank or well know companies such as EBay or Paypal. The fraudsters responsible for constructing the emails take screen shots of company logos and design the emails to resemble official emails sent out from the target company.

Phishing websites and tactics have grown in complexity and professionalism. In the past, spelling mistakes were often a dead giveaway that the email was fraudulent. As techniques become more refined, the individuals responsible for fraud exercised greater attention to detail to eliminate errors. Now, detecting emails is becoming more difficult. One way to tell is to mouse over the links in the email. Fraudulent emails will link to third party websites other than main companies official URL.

One feature of an internet fraud website is that they have a short life span. The normal life of a phishing website is around 8 days. Most of these websites are operated from areas outside the United States Of America because law enforcement officials do not have the resources and are not as quick to respond as US counterparts. The best precaution you can take is to exercise keen discrimination when accessing sites from your computer. Avoid clicking on links that are contained within emails. Always access accounts directing from the website itself.

For a list of reported phishing websites you can visit the Anti Phishing Group website. This organization is dedicated to working toward initiatives to eliminate phishing webpages. (www.antiphishing.org) Locate the link titles 'phishing archives' for a comprehensive list of known phishing attacks. You can also visit www.millermiles.co.uk to report a scam, to find out more about known scams and to peruse the archives.

Whilst phishing websites won't disappear overnight you can minimize their impact by exercising caution when opening and responding to emails. If you prefer additional security, consider a service such as Mc Afee which provides dedicated software solutions that apply a rating algorithm to all emails and block high probability cases.

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