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Phishing is when criminals try to obtain personal information online without consent. They use viruses, spyware, and deceptive emails to collect data. Man-in-the-middle phishing is the hardest to detect. To avoid becoming a victim, use antivirus software and avoid uncertified websites and emails from financial institutions.
Phishing is a broad term that refers to attempts by criminals to protect your personal information online without your knowledge or consent. Many different types of phishing attacks have emerged over the years, and they continue to be in common use today. To be on the alert for these scams, it’s important to be aware of several common strategies used as part of these attacks.
One of the most common means of launching phishing attacks is the use of viruses and spyware to capture user data. Viruses are often transmitted via email or downloaded unobtrusively when a user visits an infected website. Typically, the virus runs silently in the background, collecting personal data that is located on the hard drive or that users access unsecure websites. Running up-to-date antivirus software can help block the download of these viruses and can also prevent spyware from settling in some dark corner of your hard drive.
Deceptive phishing attacks usually involve the use of email messages that appear legitimate, but are in fact an attempt to collect financial and other personal data. For example, email scam may involve sending emails that appear to be from a specific bank. The body of the message usually states that there is something wrong with the recipient’s bank account and includes a link that can be used to fix the problem.
Clicking the link usually takes the user to what appears to be a legitimate page where they enter their account details. Once the data is submitted, email scams usually deliver a quick “thank you” message indicating that the problem with the account has been corrected. Meanwhile, the scammer now has the user’s bank account information and is free to use it as he pleases. Since banks never use this method to notify customers of problems with their accounts, any such emails should be deleted immediately or forwarded to the bank’s fraud division.
A more sophisticated example of a phishing attack is known as man-in-the-middle phishing. This approach requires the scammer to establish a location between the Internet user and the website the user wishes to visit. With this application, the scammer does not block access to the legitimate site, but simply intercepts the data, copies it, and then allows the data flow to continue to its intended destination. Of all the different types of phishing attacks, this is one of the hardest to detect and one of the hardest to stop.
Phishing attacks are designed to allow phishers to collect information that they can use for their own purposes. Often the victim doesn’t know something has happened until it’s too late. Identity theft of this type can devastate individuals, as their good credit is ruined by phishers. In order to minimize the possibility of becoming a victim of phishing, users should always run reputable anti-virus and anti-spyware protection software on their systems and never reply to emails from financial institutions or shop on uncertified websites such as sure.
