What is phishing?

Phishing is a type of deception designed to steal your identity and is performed by criminals who send out millions of 'spoofed' or e-mails. Phishing typically involves a bogus e-mail message that uses legitimate materials, such as a company's web site graphics and logos, in an attempt to entice e-mail recipients to provide personal financial details, such as credit card and social security numbers. The number and sophistication of phishing scams sent to consumers is continuing to increase dramatically.

What can you do about it?

1. Never respond to unsolicited e-mail that asks for detailed financial information. No legitimate company would ask you to provide your personal information in this manner.
2. Do not reply or click on the links in e-mail or pop up messages that ask for personal or financial information. Avoid filling out forms included in e-mail or pop-up messages.
3. A firewall helps make you invisible on the internet and blocks communications from unauthorized sources. It's especially important to run a firewall if you have a broadband connection.
4. Never use e-mail to transmit personal or financial information.

No! A new study of anti-phishing toolbars has come to a stark conclusion about their effectiveness Ð none of them are very good. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh recently conducted a study of ten browser toolbars: Microsoft Explorer 7, eBay, Google, Netcraft (Mozilla), Netscape, Cloudmark (Mozilla), Earthlink, Geotrust's TrustWatch and Stanford University's Spoofguard, and McAfee's Site Advisor. The best of the bunch only detected 85% of fraudulent websites, a good but far from secure level of effectiveness. McAfee's SiteAdvisor was unable to spot any fraudulent sites. Most of the toolbars suffered to varying degrees from false positives, where legitimate sites were erroneously identified as being phishing sites.

© 2007 Violence Free

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