… not to be confused with pishing or fishing …

This is a criminally fraudulent process used to obtain information electronically such as passwords, credit card details or a persons identity.

Most commonly the phisher uses an email or instant message and tries to bait you with a legitimate sounding request they hope will ‘catch’ your information.

There are several basic techniques used:

• Fake links - if you don’t look closely you would not notice slight misspellings and think you are going to a real bank or similar site.
• Website forgery - it is frightening how advanced phishers are becoming with their deceptions
• Phone - receiving text messages claiming to be from a bank

There are technologies that can assist in protecting you from phishing attacks.

Mozilla Firefox for example has a lot of built in features to assist.

Google is now alerting you through Firefox of attack sites.

BUT

the main protection is for the internet user to BE AWARE of what they are doing and to understand a few important points.

• No bank will EVER email you about your account details
• No reputable business will EVER email you about your account details
• Phishing emails address you as ‘valued customer’ or such rather than with your own name
• Verify your account is a common phrase
• If you don’t respond in xx hours or days your account will be closed is a common phrase
• Asking you to click a link to confirm or access your account
• Often there are spelling or grammatical mistakes in the email

If you are not sure - contact the business by phone or by a contact you have for them, NEVER by replying or clicking on links in the email!

Always check that the padlock symbol appears when you are logged into any secure web site.

You can report the scam - if in Australia SCAM Watch have links to where you can make your report.

Wikipedia have a good article explaining phishing.

So at the end of the day, you must be vigilant about emails you receive and think before you click.  In some ways phishing is even more insidous than virus and other malware because they rely on YOU to participate.

There are software tools that assist you in maintaining your computer system no matter what kind of system you have and these are important and have their place.
However one thing I learned years ago, when living on a small farm was – vigilance against ticks is the only way to protect a young dog.  I could spend as much money as I liked on any number of chemicals, but nothing is 100% effective, and a single tick is now even more likely to kill a young dog.
The parallel I’m thinking of here is that too often people install antivirus software and then forget to be vigilant.

No antivirus or similar single product can ever give you 100% protection out there in the wild.

Malware attackers are relying on tricking people as anti-malware software becomes more sophisticated.
Phishing for example works mostly by tricking you into thinking that you are at a legitimate site.  The purpose of a phishing scam is to steal your identity – passwords, account details or credit card numbers.

Firefox (a web browser many people use instead of Internet Explorer) checks sites you are visiting against lists of known phishing and malware sites.  Google has also implemented a great tool for Firefox that alerts users that a site contains malware.

Even so, each person using the internet must stay vigilant.

People are busy, tired, distracted and under time pressures, and these factors often contribute to people clicking on links, opening attachments or clicking on OK when they should not have.
Microsoft Windows Vista has the best security to date of any Windows system, but if this decreases the vigilance of the user an attack is still going to happen with potentially catastrophic results.