by Albert Juul

Created on: January 06, 2007   Last Updated: May 04, 2007

I occasionally like to go fishing but this post is not about fishing it's about phishing. For those of you who don't know phishing is an online scam were you receive a seemingly authentic e-mail from a company you do business with telling you something like, there has been a security breach on our site and some user data has been compromised. Please log into your account and change your password.

These people are ever so helpful they even provide a link for you to click on that will take you to there site. You click on the link and enter there site, well it looks authentic, but guess again. If you enter your Username and Password they own you. Online con artists are getting more and more sophisticated; all these unethical and unscrupulous individuals need is your email address, user ID, and Password. If you receive an email asking for your user name and password use some caution. Legitimate businesses will probably never ask for such information.

Also look at the URL of the site that you are directed to if it doesn't look right don't enter any information. For example I have done a lot of business in the past with PayPal their URL is www.paypal.com. I have in the past received a e-mail claiming that the credit card I use with my PayPal account needs to be updated the URL that I was directed to click on was something like www.tk-3.paypal.com. I knew immediately that someone was phishing for my information. A good rule of thumb to follow is when in doubt don't click on it.

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