Phishing

Phishing is not a misspelling of fishing. It simply means that it is some one's attempt at fishing for information from you so as to steal part or all of your identity. This can often show up as an e-mail from a banking institution or what is made to look like Pay Pal or E-Bay or some other institution usually found on the internet. The e-mail usually carries some threat about shutting down your account. Then they say that you have to log onto their site through the link provided and verify your information or you will have your account closed. And it must be done within a very short time. It's obvious when they send you an e-mail from say Citibank and you don't have a Citibank account. But if you do, it just might fool some unsuspecting person.

So here are some good rules to follow. Never click on a link provided in the e-mail. Always go to the official site of the organization mentioned and log in there. Also, never give out your credit card information, social security information, passwords or log in names to anything. And never give anything that might be used to answer a key question, such as your mother's maiden name or the city you were born in. Legitimate organizations will not ask you these things anyway.

The latest twist to this scam is to have you call a toll free number and give your information over the phone. You think it's legitimate because they answer the phone with the institution's name, but that's just part of the scam. Only call the numbers on the back of your credit card or on your billing statement.

On our resource page we provide you some additional links so you can learn more about phishing and what to look out for and why. We provide these for those who want to learn more.

We also provide links for you to report spam or Phishing attempts. This way you can take action against them. However, the first and best action is to not fall for their phishing attempts at gathering your information. If everyone were to do that, they would stop.

Phishing is an attempt at stealing your identity information. It usually comes in the form of an e-mail. And it will either ask you to click on a link contained in the e-mail or open an attachment. But there is a new twist being used to get information out of you. Now they are asking you to call a phone number so you can handle a problem that they have alerted you to. Obviously this is a false problem, but some people don't seem to realize that. To look at phishing in depth, and to get access to links that can give you more information on this subject and assist you in handling and reporting phishing attempts directed at you, just go to this article by Microsoft: Phishing with phones: the latest scam