Phishing is a very sneaky type of fraud conducted over the Internet. Its name is a throw back to the early days of hacking and identity theft and the practice of phone phreaking. While there can be very complicated schemes devised, they are all based on a very simple concept.
Phishers try to persuade you, or trick you into giving them sensitive information which they can then use to make money out of the system. For example, one very attractive target for phishers would be your paypal account. Paypal is an online payment system that allows you to put money in your account with your credit or debit card, and then basically email the money to other people's paypal accounts. It is very simple, cheap and fast and very popular for online shoppers as they do not have to give their credit card details away over the internet.
If you wanted to take money out of other people's paypal accounts, all you would really need is their email address and password. Then you sign in to their account, and send the money to an account you have set up.
What phishers will do is email paypal customers with an email that looks like an official email from paypal. It will have the paypal logo and format and will look exactly like official paypal emails to customers. It may even come from an address that looks like paypal's official website. It will go on to say it is a random security check or some other technical procedure and that you are required to type in your user name and password. It will then thank you and say the check or whatever other scheme it claims to be is complete. In the meantime, the phisher will have your password and can clear out your account.
While this is a basic example, there are countless variations of increasing complexity that will be used to try and entice customers to give out bank account details, credit card details or other sensitive information. It can often be next to impossible for the average customer to detect that the email or website is not the official one of the company it is supposed to be from and they are therefore very dangerous.
If you do suspect that an email you receive is a phishing attempt then notify the appropriate company immediately. The other thing to remember is that most banks, credit card companies and other institutions now inform their customers that they will never ask their customers for their passwords in an email, nor will any of their employees ever ask for a password and therefore never give it to anyone who asks you for it.
Listed below are more articles related to the above article from the "Identity Theft" article category.
People interested in the above article "Phishing And Fraud - What Is It?" are also interested in the related articles listed below:
Identity theft has become a major problem in recent years, and is growing by leaps and bound. Many people feel that it is becoming as epidemic due to large number of people being affected by this crime. It has become very important to safeguard against such crimes, and the best identity theft protection is to take the proactive stance and make it difficult for criminals to access your personal information.
Many people that regularly use the Internet are affected by nagging fear that online transactions are not safe and that anybody can easily steal your credit card information. However, it would be foolish to let these unreasonable fears prevent you from transacting over the Internet because many times it is perfectly safe to transact online.
Of course to prevent yourself from being a victim of identity theft you are going to want to routinely check for fraud identity theft, and more than anything this means checking your credit report. You can do it manually, but you can also take the easy way out and get an automatic identity theft fraud alert.
Identity theft is defined as being a crime that involves the stealing or misrepresenting of another person's information in order to commit other crimes. Any information such as name, address, credit card numbers, and social security numbers can be taken and used to commit identity theft, and this is why you need to pay close attention to your personal information and protect yourself.
Identity theft is a very serious issue in the world today, because it happens so often. In fact, chances are that you already know someone who has dealt with identity theft in the past, and so it is a subject that you should be educated on and really take very seriously.
There are a few steps in particular that you are going to want to take if you want the best identity theft fraud protection. These are possibly the most important steps that you will ever take in your life, as identity theft is now recognized as being one of the most commonly occurring and serious crimes in the world.
There is some kinds of mail that most people do not mind getting and then there is the mail no one wants to get. If you get a notification in the mail that you just won the lottery then you are probably pretty happy. Then there is the kind of mail you get that on the surface is terrible news but then there is good news of some sort in there too.
