Prevent Phishing

Learn about Phishing in eWeek's article:
Internet Attackers on Phishing Expeditions

It's really pretty simple. A lot of people are amazingly vulnerable to social engineering and are willing to blindly accept that a link in an email is a legitimate link to what it indicates. However, chances are pretty high that when you get a letter from eBay, for example, saying something like you're account has to be updated for one reason or another and a link is provided — that kind of link will not really be to www.ebay.com, but rather a link to www.someipaddress/phish/ or what not (an address where phishing will commence).

Here's a very simple rule for you to follow so as to aviod any such problems:
When you get an email - no matter who it came from - don't click the links in the email. Instead open your browser first and then type in the address.

AGAIN:
The easiest thing that you can do, to avoid being a victim of phishing, is to simply type the proper address into an opened browser's address bar.

There are some forms of malware that are in the wild that will cheat. Once in a while someone codes a chunk of malware code that will alter your DNS resolution (often by use of the Hosts file) so that even if you type www.ebay.com into your address bar you'll still be directed towards the phishing site.

The easiest way to prevent this is to ensure that you're using full-time anti-malware solutions and practicing safe computing by being aware of the dangers.

You can read more relating to protecting yourself and addressing such security breaches in our article on Malware Cleaners and Repair.

If you have more serious problems or any questions feel free to visit the G³ Forum . . .

OS: All Platforms > Security
Date: 02/15/06

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