It’s funny being somewhat “tech saavy” because I can’t really hang with “real” techies, but I still have many people in my life who consider me to be a “techie”. So they ask me stuff like, “how does phishing work?” I understood the basic phishing process, but I love finding visual aids to help explain things better than I can!
So, real quick I will just define phishing as… crooks trying to impersonate a bank or another business that you and I do business with in order to acquire our private information or data.
Wikipedia defines phishing as, “the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.”
How does it work – Video style!
The Commoncraft guys do a great job explaining it in the video below. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqRZGhiHGxg
My own experience with Phishing
I have gotten a couple pretty well done Phishing emails disguised as being sent from Paypal. Paypal was always a big target, but it seems that there are fewer Paypal ones lately.
One thing I am not sure is accurate in the video is that the crooks don’t know your name. If they are using a purchased email list, they will have your name and possibly even a little more personal information. So I wouldn’t assume that if they mention your name, it is a legit email.
Also, the video suggests checking the URL of the website you are on after clicking a link in an email. You should do this, but pay very close attention to the letters. For example, some phishers will do something like this…
www.lanclsend.com
instead of…
www.landsend.com
And while it is pretty easy to spot when you are looking for it, it can easily be missed if you just give it a quick glance. Regardless, I think never clicking a link in an email is a safer policy to have.
What about you? Do you have any tips to avoid be phished?
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My suggestion is that your bank would not send you an email requesting you to update your account or provide information for verification.
They can’t really validate anything through email, hence why they would contact you over the phone if such a thing happened.
I have a couple of simple practices to prevent falling for a phishing email.
first, I never click on a link in an email to go anywhere. If I want to go landsend due to a sale email that I received, I simply open my browser and type in landsend.com and log in. I just don’t click on links in emails.
I don’t copy and paste links into my browser either. it is too easy to direct someone to a site that looks just like the site that I want to go to. once you type in your log in info,,,,you are in trouble. this may make things a bit inconvenient but it is less trouble than having to get new credit cards and try to recover money that has been charged to your credit cards.