Tips On How To Protect Yourself From Phishing Sites

Phishing sites are fraudulent sites made to look just like the authentic websites. The aim of such evil plots is to deceive users like you and me, in order to obtain our login (username and password) and other confidential details.

The plot begins when an email is sent to you, informing you of offers, freebies, unusual login attempts, promotions, survey questions or updates/changes and so on. You will be asked to click on a link on that email, which looks like it’s a true url and in doing so, you will be brought to a fake “website”.

Here are some quick tips to bear in mind:

• Be alert when you receive emails with links to banks, PayPal or eBay sites as they are almost ALWAYS the prime targets.
• If you decide to click onto the link on the fake email, then pay attention to the url on the address bar. Example if you’re supposed to be on the PayPal site, the address bar must show http://www.paypal.com and not http://rrcs-67-52-89-162.west.biz.rr.com/MembersLogin/index.htm or something else.
• If you are using your browser’s auto form filler/password manager to login to legitimate websites, you will immediately notice that the auto form does not appear when you are on a fake (spoof) website. That’s because the url is FAKE!
• Look out for browsers that come with safety measures. Browsers like Microsoft IE7 have Anti-Phishing Filters, which you should turn on so that the address bar turns red when you are on a fake website. Older browsers don’t have such features.
• Take the Anti-Phishing Phil to learn how to spot a phish site by looking at the url.

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