P is for Phishing
Phishing (pronounced ‘fishing’) is the term used to describe the criminal activity of tricking people to reveal their personal details such as passwords and credit card numbers.
In most cases you are sent an email – supposedly from your bank – informing you of a problem with your account. The illustration shows an actual phishing attempt using The Royal Bank Of Scotland. It looks as if it has come from the bank but if the recipient clicks on the link labelled ‘owner verification’ they are not taken to the bank’s website but a website set up by the phishing criminals. The bogus website looks exactly like the banks website only, when they log in their username and password are recorded for later use by the criminals.
This is an example phishing attempt I received recently:
Phishing is on the increase and some are very convincing even deceiving the most experienced PC users.
A good Spam filter such as iHateSpam will help keep phishing emails out of your Inbox.
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