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Beware of Phishing Scams
Phishing (pronounced “fishing”) is a scam that tricks people into revealing their private, personal information (like credit-card numbers and passwords).
Originally, phishing was an e-mail scam in which criminals sent a fake “urgent” message that appeared to be from a respected company or financial institution.
The message asked its recipients to verify or update their account information by clicking a link in the e-mail and visiting a special website. When the victims followed the instructions, the information they entered on the fake website was captured by the criminals and used to commit identity theft. In recent years, this crime has produced several sinister spin-offs. Now, phishing is used more as a term to refer to data-mining scams in general.
Here are some tips to avoid phishing:
• Don’t respond to e-mail asking for private information: Instead, be proactive and call the bank or company and ask them whether they are trying to get in touch with you. Most financial institutions have toll-free phone numbers you can call (usually the numbers are listed on the back of your credit cards).
• Don’t click on links in strange or unexpected e-mail: This is
especially true of those that appear to be from financial institutions.
• Read your e-mail offline (disconnected from the Internet): This will prevent hostile code from being downloaded to your computer if you accidentally click a phishing link in an e-mail. For dial-up users, this is easy: simply log-off your Internet service. For users of always-on, high-speed cable/DSL connections, you will need to turn on the “lock” feature of your software firewall to halt all inbound and outbound Internet activity.
• Don’t click links inside Instant Messages: This is true regardless of whether or not the link was sent to you from someone on your “buddy” list of contacts.
• Never send your personal or financial information in an e-mail or instant message: Like credit-card numbers, social-security numbers, bank-account numbers, passwords, user names, and so on. A normal e-mail or instant message does not have encryption protection, which means it could be intercepted by a criminal who could use your private information to commit identity theft. If you need to give important information to someone, call him or her on the telephone — but only use a landline, because cell-phone calls can also be intercepted.
• Beware of telephone phishing: Do not respond to voicemails from companies asking you to call a special phone number to clear up information about your account. This could be phone phishing. Instead, call their central phone number and find out whether or not they really need to speak with you. Also, be suspicious of companies who call you out of the blue and ask you to verify information like your account number, password, PIN number, mother’s maiden name, social-security number, age, home address, and so on. Don’t tell them anything. Instead, hang up and call their central phone number.
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