Phishing & Spoofing
With the growing frequency and sophistication of phishing emails and spoofing website, it's more important than ever to recognize scams and be vigilant.
Spoofing: Scammers create fraudulent websites that mimic legitimate companies. They then seek to gain personal/financial information through online forms/applications or to download viruses, such as “key loggers” that record and transmit account numbers and passwords entered on the infected computer.
Phishing: Using fraudulent e-mails and “spoofed” websites, scammers request personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account numbers and passwords, social security numbers, etc.
Phishing statistics are sobering. Phishing attacks have tripled from last year, and an estimated 5% of those receiving fraudulent emails respond to these phishing emails, exposing themselves to identity theft and financial loss.
Pharming: Pharming is a hacker's attack aiming to redirect a website's traffic to another (bogus) website. Sophisticated measures known as anti-pharming are required to protect against this serious threat. Antivirus software and spyware removal software cannot protect against pharming.
What to watch for:
- E-mail requests for personal financial information. They often talk of suspended accounts or blocked accounts. The information they ask for may also be information that the legitimate company would have no reason to ask, like your ATM card PIN or Social Security number.
- E-mails that sound overly dramatic, extreme, or urgent to drive users to act now "or else," and they only give online means for solving the supposed urgent matter.
- Requests that are not personalized with your name, and instead use a general greeting like "Dear Customer."
- Unprofessional websites. Scammers try to create perfect replicas of a company's website and/or emails. But they usually don't succeed. Often there are misspelled words and informational inaccuracies, there may be incorrect logos or website colors, and the emails may not match the real company's standard template.
If you receive an email that seems just "not quite right," don't take a chance: don't click on any links provided in the email and contact the company by phone to see if the email is legitimate.