Combating phishing
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. The name is believed to come from the term fishing in which you try to catch something. There is many different way in witch a phisher can steal your information. This article will concentrate on the many ways to combat email phishing.
Emails
The simplest ways to encounter phishing is with emails. The first thing that you need to know is that no bank is going to email you about your account. Yahoo, Google, Ebay, and Paypal are not going to email you for your password to fix an account error. These companies will never send you a email with a link in it. The second is that, if you ever get an email from someone in another country do not answer it. If you do not know the person who is sending you the email do not answer it. I have received many emails from people who need someone to help them. They are going to die of cancer (or some other disease) and they want some good Christian to give there money to so the government will not take it all. E mails like this are always bad. The only reason why an email would bring faith into there reason for giving you money is if the sender is up to no good.
What to do
If you think that you have received a phishing email there are some ways to combat it. The first is, do not answer it. If you answer it the person who sent it will know that your email address is active. This can only lead to you receiving more phishing emails than you did before. It may be tempting to email them back and say something like "nice try" but do not.
The second is, do not click on any links on the email. There are two reasons for this. The first is that if you do, then the person who sent it to you will know that your email address is active. The second is that it will most likely send you to a web site that is set up to look like what ever web site it is suppose to look like, Bank of America, PayPal, Yahoo. The problem is that they are not, and if you type out any information into these sites then that information is compromised.
The third is do not contact the person who sent the email message to you. Even if it is through email, phone, or post card. Then they will know that your address is active.
When you receive a phishing email the safest thing for you to do is to delete it. If you delete it then it is like you never received it. That way your information does not get stolen. Do not answer the email, do not click on any links on the email, the safest thing to do is to delete it.
written in 5/25/2009
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updated last in March, 2012