Monday, May 11, 2009

Phishing


PHISHING is an online fraud that, unfortunately, is becoming more and more common. It consists in the attempting to obtain personal details and sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers or pins numbers and secret codes, in general. The technique of phishing is based on the
mass sending of fake e-mails or spam messages with the intent of stealing the above mentioned details. The victims of phishing usually receives a bogus e-mail that ask them to connect to a fake Website almost identical to the legitimate organization's one (i.e. Visa, E-Bay and many others) and they insert their personal data. Easier done than said, the criminal organisation immediately steals their information to carry out illegal transactions.
Using phishing filters, don't clicking on suspicious links or attached files are some simple tricks to not fall victim to phishing.
The origin of the name phishing comes from the lingo of hackers who usually replace 'f' with 'ph'; moreover, the analogy with the verb "to fish" is clear: the aim of hackers perpetrating identity theft is to fish ingenuous people's passwords and user names in the big ocean of the Internet.

Click here to have a more complete and exhaustive definition of phishing
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