Phishing

What is Phishing?

Phishing is a form of identity theft. Phishing emails are designed to trick the user into providing information to an unauthorized person. They use official logos and often include official appearing masked links that redirect users to a malicious site. They often read as urgent messages requiring immediate action. They request password, credit card, financial, and military operations information. Often they include poor grammar and syntax which aids in their identification. A variant of this is “Spear Phishing” where the emails contain very detailed information targeting the a specific user.

Who is Susceptible?
Everyone! If you have an email account, chances you may already have had at least one. It is estimated that over 8.5 Billion Phishing emails are sent each month.

What is the Risk?
Personal Identity Theft, Funds Theft, Current corporate information exposure, Embarrassment, and Data Breaches of sensitive company Information

Protective Measures:

To help you better understand what Phishing looks like, lets view a 3 minute video on Phishing from MSNBC's Inside ID Theft series.

Safety Tips:

1.  Never respond to an email using a provided link.  Always type the web address into the browser or use a known valid bookmark.
 
2.  Check the web address to make sure the site your visiting is secure and is the intended location
(e.g. www.ebay.com not www.ebay.ru)

3.  When contacting a business, always use a known good phone number, never a number provided in email.  Sources for obtaining trusted contact numbers can include a paper statements sent via US Postal mail, your local telephone providers 411 directory service, or a previously bookmarked web address that your trust.
 
4.  Keep your Anti-virus updated