Protect Yourself Against Phishing Sites on the Web
Online criminals are thriving even in the face of new automated defenses.
Do you think the new built-in phishing filters in Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2 will protect your
private data? Think again. Anti-Phishing Working Group found 37,439 new sites- the number of sites devoted has nearly doubled since last year. (Click on the "Image" thumbnail to see the chart showing this trend.)
According to RSA, a security vendor, hackers in January started selling a phishing kit that lets criminals set up very convincing fake Web sites with little effort. The fake site pulls images and layouts from the real site, usually a bank or other financial institution, and passes the user's information back to the real site to mimic a regular log-in–while keeping a copy of the account data for the criminals.
Research firm Gartner estimates that 3.5 million Americans gave up sensitive information to phishers in 2006, an 84 percent jump from the previous year–for a total loss of $2.8 billion. One single phishing gang, called Rock Phish, is estimated to have taken in more than $100 million.
What should you do to protect yourself?
- Heuristic scanning may help combat the scourge
- Use McAfee's SiteAdvisor browser add-on for IE and Firefox (highly recommended)
- Look at the browser address bar which will turn green. This is due to the new type of site certification–called Extended Validation Secure Sockets Layer, or EV SSL–may also help.The sites are verified by 3rd party such as Verisign.
- Never click a link in an e-mail or on a third-party site to go to any of your financial accounts.
- You always use your own bookmark or type in the address of the particular bank
- Be careful before clicking on the link in the email even when you're 100 percent certain that the e-mail is legitimate, you should be extra cautious.
- Automated tools, such as the free Password Safe and PwdHash utilities can provide some help.
But to combat ever-adapting phishers, your best protection remains…YOU.
Related Artciles :
- India ranks third in phishing
- Beware of Fake UTI Bank page online
Videos :
- Phishing 101 : Learn how to avoid scam emails and phishing schemes targetting banks, PayPal, eBay, etc. Courtesy of My-PC-Help.com
- Phishing Demo : A demonstration of a live PayPal phishing site before we send requests to have it taken offline.
- Phishing Demo - Aloha : A live site phishing demo. The target is a small Federal Credit Union in Hawaii.
- Phishing : Learn how to avoid phishing scams!
via [ pcworld ]