Thursday, August 2, 2007

No thanks for all the Phish

You're probably aware of this, but I thought I'd mention it: beware of phishing.

This is when scammers pretend to be a bank or other financial institution and send you an e-mail with a link. Usually, they give a seemingly urgent reason to go to the link and log in.

The entire goal is to get your login. From that point, they can go to the real site and log in as you and do whatever they want with your accounts. And, they aren't going to deposit money into them, that's for sure.

Banks don't send e-mails to their customers for anything important. If there were an issue, you'd get a letter or phone call. And don't be fooled because the website looks authentic; any web designer could do that in his sleep.

So never trust any e-mail from a "bank" (or from "Paypal" or "eBay") that urges you to log in (especially when there are spelling and grammar errors). If you have any questions, call the bank, or type their web page directly into your browser.