Protect yourself from Phishing Sites /Attacks

What is Phishing?

Phishing is an e-mail fraud method in which the hacker sends out legitimate-looking email in an attempt to collect personal and financial information from you. Typically, the messages appear to come from well known Web sites. Web sites that are usually targeted by phishers include PayPal, eBay, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook, and America Online.

How To protect yourself from Phishing Attacks?

Well, there are two methods you can use to protect yourself from phishing:

The first one is: Netcraft Toolbar . Netcraft tool bar is a free toolbar Internet Explorer and Firefox. This tool will definitely help you a lot to catch phishing site. You will get this alert when visiting a Phishing site:

The Toolbar also:

• Catch suspicious URLs containing characters which have no common purpose other than to deceive.
• Enforces display of browser navigational controls (toolbar & address bar) in all windows, to defend against pop up windows which attempt to hide the navigational controls.
• Clearly displays sites’ hosting location, including country, helping you to evaluate fraudulent urls (e.g. the real citibank.com or barclays.co.uk sites are unlikely to be hosted in the former Soviet Union).

http://toolbar.netcraft.com/help/tutorials/installing.html

The Second one (works only for IE 8):SmartScreen Filter.SmartScreen Filter is an option in Internet Explorer 8 that helps you avoid socially harmful phishing Web sites and online fraud browsing the Web.

SmartScreen Filter:

• Checks Web sites against a dynamically updated list of reported phishing and sites.
  
  
• Checks software downloads against a dynamically updated list of reported malicious software sites.
  
  
• Helps prevent you from visiting phishing Web sites and other Web sites that contain malware that can lead to identity theft.

When you have the SmartScreen Filter turned on, if you attempt to visit a Web site that has been reported, the screen below appears and advises you not to continue to the unsafe Web site.


The SmartScreen Filter also warns you when you download unsafe software. The above warning screen will warn you that the download has been blocked for your safety.

In order to turn on SmartScreen Filter :

• Click the Safety button. Point to SmartScreen Filter, and then click Turn On SmartScreen Filter.
• In the SmartScreen Filter dialog box, click OK.

SmartScreen source: Microsoft Website


What to do if you came across a new phishing website?

Report it at once to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the FBI through the Internet Fraud Complaint Center. They would shut down the sites and catch the responsible.

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Other resources:

Phishing - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Explains some common phishing methods and dangers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

Anti-Phishing Working Group
Our mission is to provide a resource for information on the problem and solutions for phishing and email fraud.
http://www.antiphishing.org/

OnGuard Online - Phishing
Phishing section of an informational website run by the US Federal Trade Commission. Offers advice on how to spot, avoid and report phishing attacks.
http://onguardonline.gov/phishing.html

Recognize phishing scams and fraudulent e-mails
Phishing is a type of e-mail scam designed to steal your identity. Learn more about how this scam works and what a phishing e-mail message may look like.
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/phishing/identify.mspx