What is Phishing?

Phishing is an email fraud method in which criminals send out legitimate-looking email requesting personal and financial details from unsuspecting people. The messages normally appear to come from well-known and trustworthy Web sites. Web sites that are often used in phishing attacks include eBay, PayPal, Yahoo, MSN, and America Online as well as the sites of a lot of big banks and retailers. Typically, the fraudulent emails direct victims to counterfeit Web pages that look identical to the companies' sites in order to fool you into submitting personal, financial, or password data. Phishing emails will almost always tell you to click a link that takes you to a site where your personal information is

 requested. Legitimate organizations would probably never request this sort of information via email. If you submit the information anyway, the scammer will be able to access your account and you are vulnerable to identity theft. Your money may be transferred away into the criminal's account or used to make online purchases. A couple of years back phishers mostly targeted big American financial institutions, but nowadays phishing attacks have spread to other countries and languages as well and also target smaller companies. Swedish bank Nordea has suffered one of the biggest publicly known phishing frauds in history. Over 8 million kronor ($1,200,000) disappeared in three months as a result of a tailor-made attack launched by Russian criminals. Reports indicated that 250 customers had become victims.

The number of phishing attacks tracked by industry association the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) has multiplied 100-fold between January 2004 and May 2006 and the number has continued to grow since then. In April 2007 APWG detected 55,643 new phishing sites while 11,121 phishing sites were detected in April 2006. Phishing is mostly associated with spam, whereby thousands of messages are sent out at once in the hope that a few people will take the bait. Therefore, phishing attempts often appear to come from sites and companies with which you do not even have an account.

The word "phishing" refers to the Internet fraudsters using email lures to "fish" for passwords and financial data from the sea of Internet users.
 Click here for some good advice on how to avoid phishing scams.

What is a firewall?

A firewall helps protect your computer from hackers who might try to delete information, crash your computer, or even steal your passwords or credit card numbers. Make sure your firewall is always turned on.

 How to turn on your firewall
 How to choose a firewall
 Learn more about firewalls for your operating system

Antispyware technology

Viruses and spyware are two kinds of usually malicious software that you need to protect your computer against. You need antispyware technology to help prevent spyware, and you need to keep it regularly updated.

 Get antispyware technology
 Use Windows Defender, free antispyware for Windows XP SP2
 Learn about spyware
 Learn more about spyware protection for your operating system