by Matt Gadfield

Created on: May 22, 2008

Phishing is a term used to describe an email-based scam. In order to better protect yourself it is first important to understand it.

Most of us have had those emails claiming to be from our bank or another important organisation. They invariably claim that there is a problem with your account and that you must "verify" it by signing in at the link below. The scammers adopt something of a scattergun approach, leading to people receiving emails purporting to come from institutions with which they have had no dealings whatsoever.

The link, if clicked, will take you to a site set up by the scammers specifically to harvest the personal details of victims. Some of these sites can be very convincing, a problem which is not helped by genuine websites changing their appearance on a regular basis. Others will install a keylogger on your computer. A keylogger is a program that records every key pressed and transmits it to another computer, in this case the scammers. If one of these is installed, your attempts to login to the genuine site later on will be recorded and your details intercepted.

Having gained your personal data, the scammers will empty your account and quite likely use your name and credit rating to apply for financial services. The consequences of this can be difficult and costly to fix, as you will have to convince institutions or worse debt collection agencies that you did not take out those loans or place those orders. Many banks are now offering help if you should experience these problems. However, you can protect yourself.

Your first line of defence against phishing is to delete any email asking for personal data. Your bank will never contact you in this way, and if you're not sure then the majority of banks have an email address to which you can forward phishing emails. They'll be able to confirm it as a scam, and possibly pass it on to law enforcement personnel as evidence. Do not be duped by unsolicited email attachments, as whatever they claim to be they are quite likely to be viruses or other malware. Get yourself a good virus scanner and a firewall, if you do not already have them. Use the update service of your computer, even though it can be tedious waiting for the updates to be installed it will make your computer more secure.

Be aware of your surroundings if accessing sensitive data in a public place. Incidences have been recorded of passwords being stolen by someone watching over the user's shoulder as they type it in. Public computers could also have viruses or keyloggers installed depending on how good their maintenance personnel are at keeping them secure.

Lastly, shred any sensitive paperwork before throwing it out. Cross cut shredders are cheap enough and make documents impossible for all but the most desperate to reassemble.

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