Phishing Scams
Phishing is a variation on “fishing,” the idea being that bait is thrown out with the hopes that while most will be ignore the bait, some will be tempted into biting (see a more detailed description below).
Never give out your personal information on the internet unless you know who you are giving it to and you initiated the contact!
Internet sites with further information about identifying and protecting against phishing scams are:
(Phish´ing) (n.) The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft.
The e-mail directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords and credit card, social security, and bank account numbers, that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information. For example, recently there has been a proliferation of a phishing scam in which users received e-mails supposedly from eBay, or banks, claiming that the user’s account was about to be suspended unless he clicked on the provided link and updated the credit card information that the genuine eBay, or bank, already had.
Because it is relatively simple to make a Web site look like a legitimate organizations site by mimicking the HTML code, the scam counted on people being tricked into thinking they were actually being contacted by eBay, or their bank, and were subsequently going to their site to update their account information. Somehow these people don't seem like strangers. The information these scam artists ask for is designed to provide them with the ability to open credit card accounts or empty your bank accounts. By spamming large groups of people, the “phisher” counted on the e-mail being read by a percentage of people who actually had listed credit card numbers with eBay, or had a bank account with the one being mimicked.