Cyber Crooks Go "Phishing"

"Phishing," the latest craze among online evil-doers, hasnothing to do with sitting at the end of a dock on a sunnyafternoon dangling a worm to entice hungry catfish. But, if you take their bait, this new breed of online conartist will hook you, reel you in, and take you for everydollar you have... or worse."Phishing" describes a combination of techniques used bycyber crooks to bait people into giving up sensitivepersonal data such as credit card numbers, social securitynumbers, bank account numbers, dates of birth and more.Their techniques work so well that, according toFraudWatchInternational.com, "phishing" rates as thefastest growing scam on the Internet. Here's the basic pattern for a "phishing" scam... You receive a very official email that appears to originatefrom a legitimate source, such as a bank, eBay, PayPal,a major retailer, or some other well known entity. In the email it tells you that something bad is about tohappen unless you act quickly. Typically it tells you that your account is about to getclosed, that someone appears to have stolen your identity,or even that someone opened a fraudulent account using yourname. In order to help straighten everything out, you need toclick a link in the email and provide some basic accountinformation so they can verify your identity and then giveyou additional details so you can help get everythingcleared up. Once you give up your information... it's all over but thecrying!After getting your information, these cyber-bandits canempty your bank accounts, deplete your PayPal accounts, runup your credit card balances, open new credit accounts,assume your identity and much worse.An especially disturbing new variation of this scamspecifically targets online business owners and affiliatemarketers. In this con, the scammer's email informs you that they'vejust sent $1,219.43 (or a similar big but believableamount) in affiliate commissions to you via PayPal. They need you to log into your PayPal account to verifyreceipt of the money and then email them back to confirmyou got it.Since you're so excited at the possibility of an unexpectedpay day, you click the link to go to PayPal, log in, andBANG! They have your PayPal login information and can emptyyour account.This new "phishing" style scam works extremely well for 2basic reasons. First, by exploiting your sense of urgency created by fearor greed, crooks get you to click the link and give themyour information without thinking. Second, the scammers use a variety of cloaking and spoofingtechniques to make their emails and websites appear totallylegitimate, making it extremely hard to spot a fake website,especially when they've first whipped you into an emotionalfrenzy.The good news, however, is that you can protect yourselfrelatively easily against this type of cyber-crime withbasic software and common sense. Most of these scams get delivered to you via Spam(unsolicited email), so a good spam blocker will cut downon many of them even making it to your inbox. If you receive an email that looks legitimate and you wantto respond, Stop - Wait - Think! Verify all phone numbers with a physical phone book or online phone directory like www.Verizon.com or www.ATT.com/directory/ before calling. Look for spelling and grammatical errors that make it looklike someone who doesn't speak English or your nativelanguage very well wrote it. Never click the link provided in the email, but go directlyto the website by typing in the main address of the siteyourself (example: www.paypal.com or www.ebay.com). Forward the email to the main email address of the website(example: support@paypal.com) or call the customer servicenumber on the main website you typed in yourself and ask ifit is in fact legitimate. Above all remember this: Your bank, credit card company, PayPal, eBay and anyoneelse you deal with online already knows your accountnumber, username, password or any other account specificinformation. They don't need to email you for ANY reason to ask you toconfirm your information -- so NEVER respond to emailrequests for your account or personal details.