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Phishing Scams. You Don’t Fall For Them Do You?
By Bloggaman | May 13, 2008
Ah….phishing scams. I love them. They are great. Some people hate phishing scams. Who would hate them? The people that fall for them. They really hate them because they realize after the fact how stupid they were when they look back at the email they received. Another problems is that some of you may not understand what a phishing scam is. If you don’t please keep reading. You should know what they are so you can protect yourself.
Below is and example of a phishing scam.
Dear PayPal ® customer,
We recently reviewed your account, and we suspect an unauthorized transaction on your account.
Protecting your account is our primary concern. As a preventive measure we have temporary limited your access to sensitive information.
Paypal features.To ensure that your account is not compromised, simply hit “Resolution Center” to confirm your identity as member of Paypal.
- Login to your Paypal with your Paypal username and password.
- Confirm your identity as a card member of Paypal.
Please confirm account information by clicking here Resolution Center and complete the “Steps to Remove Limitations.” *Please do not reply to this message. Mail sent to this address cannot be answered.
Copyright © 1999-2008 PayPal. All rights reserved.
Now do you understand? A phishing scam is what they call the emails scammers send out trying to phish for a person’s private information. They usually send them to look like they come from Paypal, EBay, and any number of online banks. If you get an email from a bank you don’t use, it is likely a phishing scam. You don’t fall for them do you?
Now, back to my comment at the beginning of this article where I said I love phishing scams. Let me state that in a different way. I love it when I get them but I don’t really love phishing scams themselves. Many people fall for these scams and end up losing a lot of money with it. That in itself is a shame. I hate that people can scam people this way.
Why I love getting the phishing emails is because it makes me laugh. They are so obviously a scam that I enjoy a good laugh when I get one. I get one from Wells Fargo and think, hey, I don’t bank with Wells Fargo. There are many people that get caught because they hit the right bank and the people think it is real for some reason. I apologize for being so nonchalant about this but I work in computers so it is easy for me. I have some pointers below so you can identify a phishing scam and protect yourself.
- First of all, your bank will never email you requesting your login information. That should make it easy to save your money. Don’t ever click on links in emails like this and don’t ever give them any information. Delete them immediately.
- If you wonder how they make them look so good there is a reason for it. Most often they put in text and then make it clickable so you never see the URL you are clicking on. Paypal’s website is www.paypal.com and it is real. They can also make it this way, Paypal. It takes you to the same site but it looks much different. What they do is make like look like Paypal but when you click on the link you don’t go to that site. You end up going to a site like paypal.phishing-site.com. These people can make a site look just like Paypal but don’t fall for it.
- Here is a good way to figure out what site you would go to if you were to click the link. You can usually see the the website address by putting your mouse over the link and looking at the status bar. The status bar is at the bottom of the browser window. Try it by moving the mouse over the link to Paypal above. You will see it points to what the link says. Now look at this link. Go to Paypal. If you put your mouse over the “Go to Paypal” link and look at the status bar below you will see it doesn’t take you to Paypal. It will take you to the main page of Bloggaville. This is how they trick you. Now some of you may think this is easy stuff but not everyone does. I am hoping to educate some people so they don’t lose their asses.
- Last but not least, don’t look at these kinds of emails. I am restating #1 because it is important. Don’t even mess around. Don’t enter phony info thinking you are having fun with them because you could give a hacker your IP address if you visit the phony site. The scammers may decide to torment you for sport. Don’t mess with it. Just delete it and forget about it.
Well that was a quick lesson on Phishing scams so please don’t be fooled by them in the future. Your money was hard earned by you so you should have the right to spend it as you wish. Please be careful and have fun. Don’t take the bait.
Topics: Money, Technology |
