Thursday, November 23, 2006

what is phishing?

phishing is a form of identity theft where the victim is enticed (typically by means of a message of some sort) to use what appears to be a legitimate logon page for some service (like online banking or paypal or ebay) but is actually a fake page designed to capture identifying information (like credit card numbers or login credentials) that enable the perpetrators to fraudulently pose as the owners of that information...

like email scams, phishing is usually about getting your money; however, unlike email scams where you are convinced to hand over your money, phishing just tricks you into revealing the information necessary for the phisher to take your money him/herself...

also like email scams, phishing is a form of social engineering - usually you're given some compelling reason to visit their fake logon page such as giving you the chance to undo a transaction that you never actually made or making mandatory updates to your account information...

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