Miss Young
Phishing

What is phishing? This definition is from the Webopedia:

phishing (fish´ing) (n.)

The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user's information.

See an example below

 


Here are some of the phishing letters I received:

 
 

Here is an example. I received an email, apparently from the SouthTrust Bank:

The link looks like this:

The page contains the real SouthTrust logo, but http://south-personalbank.com is NOT the real bank. The real bank looks like this

Note the "E-mail Fraud Alert". It leads to the following page:

In other words, watch out before you enter your personal information into a form. It could end in the hands of criminals.

 

 

Here is another example. I received an email, apparently from Paypal:




The link in the mail does not point to PayPal, but a fake PayPal website:

You can also note that the email was sent on March 8th, which is later than the February 25th date in the text.

I reported it to PayPal, and received this answer:




     
 

Copyright © 2004-2015 419.bittenus.com. All rights reserved. Updated January 26, 2019