Phishing

All right ........we'll before i start with Phishing , just a quick update that the antivirus seems to be doing fine apart from the fact that my operating system has slowed down a bit .

Ok well start with phishing now .........................................Have a look at the image below..........

Well this looks like the standard Yahoo Mail sign up page. This is not the standard Yahoo Mail sign up page. The URL is actually different. At this moment most of you might say that the URL is a local system URL , which is correct but had this been on a web server the URL could have been anything but mail.yahoo.com

Well what is phishing? Any guesses .................................Phishing is nothing but a replica of the original page which looks and feels exactly like the orignal one and is made to trick the user into entering his/her credentials , confidential information , bank account details etc.

Phishing is primarilly carried out in order to trick the user into entering credit card information , bank accound details , email passwords etc. Phishing is one of the major issues when it comes to information security and thousands have been victims of it.

So , how does a attacker actually get you to the required replica link. He might send you a mail stating " You have won a Million Dollars click here to sign into your account and get the amount transfered.
The moment you click on the link you are diverted to a website that looks exactly like your banks genuine website but isnt anywhere close to being your bank..........As human race is known to be greedy by nature , the person enters his/her iformation without realising that his entire life savings are at a risk cause of this.

The attacker fools the victim into entering the desired website with the aid of social engineering(I`ll be talking about that in detail next time) . The attacker basically tempts the user by stating that he/her she has a won a large sum of money or a brand new car or a hifi mobile handset.

We often forget the saying " There is never a free lunch" when we are tempted with situations as these mentioned above.

So how does one look out for phished pages......................................................

1.Always check the URL of the link you are visiting .......................... make sure it is www.yahoo.com & not www.yaahoo.com or www.yahooo.com

2.If you recive a mail from your bank or anyother source always check the mail header to verify the email address.

3.Always check the Url given in the email to make sure it is a genuine one.

4.Your account can never be terminated online , so dont panick when you recive a mail stating your account has been closed.

These are some of the measures that you could take in order to avoid being phished ...............but to aid you in preventing the same browsers are equipped with phishing filters and if you come across where firefox prompts on the screen web forgery kindly do not enter the link.

Keep these mesaures in mind and keep your savings safe. Happy browsing !!