Bait fishing, Internet style
Bait fishing has been growing in popularity in the Internet in the past few years.
The most popular form of Internet bait fishing involves email.
Have a look at the following bait email excerpts.
Chase Bank bait example:
PayPal bait example:
You and 5% of other potential game fish might be saying to yourselves that the above emails seem like legitimate emails, but unfortunately for you, they are not.
The above emails are examples of bait that was sent to many thousands of innocent people in the hope that some of them will follow the embedded links and try to log into their accounts.
Now here is where the plot thickens and the differences between fishing and phishing come to light.
The people who followed the links provided their account information to the bad guys (aka the fishermen).
The fishermen, instead of taking you home and preparing you for dinner, took your account information, logged in to your real account and moved any funds they could find over there to a country where rules and regulations are at best recommendations for proper behavior.
You might consider yourself lucky because you were not cooked for dinner but imagine your hurt and surprise, a couple of days later, when you decide to visit your account again, only to find that all you’re hard earned money has disappeared with out a trace.
At this point some where in the world (probably not to far from you) some one would be adding a new wing to his house, buying a car or just going on a long deserved vacation all thanks to your generosity.
Although I’m sure you are a very generous person, I am also sure that this wasn’t exactly what you had in mind, while working all those long days trying to build and care for your nest egg.
So what do we do? How do we protect ourselves from becoming anonymous benefactors of some one we don’t even know?
Well the answer is not a complicated as you might think. In most cases you could protect yourself very easily against those types of phishing scams.
First you have to mentally choose not to be a phish.
Second you should follow a few basic rules.
Rules for becoming an unhook able fish
- Protect your system by installing antivirus/antispyware software and making sure they are updated regularly.
- Be very suspicious of emails alerting you to problems in your online accounts or prompting you for immediate action that involves logging into your online accounts.
- Be very suspicious of emails promising you deals that are too good to be true in return for some personal information. Including but not limited to emails that inform you that you have been elected to receive funds from some recently deceased tyrant in some 3’rd world country or that you have been inducted into the hall of fame because of your great contributions to humanity(as flattering as it may sound).
- Never follow email links from institutions/companies/websites you have online accounts in. If you want to login to your online account. Open a web browser and type the URL (website address) directly in the browser.
Summary
Although this short article barely touched the surface of this growing problem. I hope you are now more aware of the problem of phishing in the Internet.
Phishing can have many forms but the common denominator is that phishing requires the phish (victims) to divulge their personal information to the phishermen.
When you wander the online world or when it comes to you in the form of emails or other types of communications (messenger messages, etc.) always remember that you should never give your personal information unless you understand why its needed and have verified that the party that is requiring this information is who or what he claims to be.
For more in-depth information about phishing you can read the wikipedia definition of phishing or visit the Anti-Phishing organization web site.
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