What is Phishing ? Be aware; learn how to recognize phishing online scams and other fraudulent Emails.

• Protecting online accounts from online scams
• How to deal with suspicious emails
• What can you do if you think you may have been taken in by a phishing Scam

What is phishing ? Phishing has been around for a while now, if you use internet banking they will no doubt be very concerned by this.

Phishing is a form of deceit to get personal details from you such as bank details, credit card numbers, basically any valuable information that can be used to steal your hard earned money from you.

scam artists send literally millions of fraudulent emails which on the surface appear to come from perfectly normal Web sites you trust, like your bank, auction website or credit card company requesting personal information from you.

They usually look very official with logos taken from real companies.

These scam emails usually have one or two links within them that appear to go to the real website, but of course the links only take you to a false site.

Once on the site if you enter your details it may only take a matter of minutes before a thief begins trying to use the information they have just gained.

There are a number of ways to spot a fraudulent email

Firstly any reputable bank, credit card company or the like will never ask you for personal information in an email, email generally is not secure so any sensitive information should never be sent in an email in any case.

The email will contain an action statement, something similar to
Your account will be closed down in 48 hours
We have noticed some fraudulent activity on your account. Click below to gain access to your account

Any links in the email may look ok, but the web address you see may not be the actual web address

By hovering the cursor over the link the real web address will be revealed.

Even if the address looks real look at it closely, as criminals can use addresses that are very close to the original for example

www.computer-adviser.com Is our real address, but a scammer may use www.computer-advizer.com Or www.c0mputer-adviser.com

By simply changing a character or 2 the addresses still looks ok until we have a good look.

Summary
Be aware protecting online accounts, never open valuable data websites from an email.
Use software such as Microsoft’s phishing filter which comes bundled with internet explorer 8.

Keep all software up to date, this includes Microsoft system patches, antivirus and spyware protection.

If the worst happens
If you think you may have fallen prey to one of these scams and passed on personal information,

• Call your bank or card issuer asap
• Change any passwords asap
• Time really is of the essence here.

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