Let's Not Go Phishing

This has got to be the best scam going...period. What the heck is phishing? It's when you receive an apparently legitimate email from a major company such as AOL, eBay, PayPal or Capitalone. The email looks completely official and the email apparently is coming from the said business. In these emails you are informed that there is some sort of problem with your account, and that your account needs to be verified. There are many variations, such as the following: I am an eBay member, and I received an apparent email from security@eBay.com informing me that there had been an unauthorized access into my account and that I needed to verify my login info to confirm that my account had not been compromised. Now, here's where the scam starts. The hyperlink that I am supposed to click on, which looking completely legitimate as it's an eBay hyperlink, is actually linking to some non-eBay site located God knows.  where. To give an example, look at the link below. This is an apparent link to an eBay page. However, I set the actual link to Google. If you click on the link you will see that you go to a webpage other than what you are led to believe by the hyperlink. This is a harmless example. Unfortunately, most cases of phishing are not. 

http://www.respond.eBay.com/verify

Here's a worse-case scenario. I received a phising email apparently from CapitalOne stating that my account had been compromised. I clicked on the link and am presented with an apparent CapitalOne form asking for my social security number, my name, my credit card number and expiration with it's billing address. Now just think of the disaster that can happen here. First they get my credit card number and can immediately start charging fraudulent charges. Worst yet, they have my social security number, and can therefore move full-speed ahead with identity theft: opening up credit card accounts under my name, as well as applying for car loans. It would take months to clean up the wreckage.

How to prevent phishing?

First, remember that virtually no major corporation is going to send you an email asking you to verify critical information. Never give this info out. If you have questions, call the company in question.

Most important way to detect phising: Move the mouse pointer over the hyperlink in the suspect email without actually clicking on it. Let the mouse pointer hover for a few seconds. A box will come up showing the real web address the link is going to. Look at the graphic below. The hyperlink seems to be linked to a CapitalOne address, but if you use this trick, you will see that the real link is to some funky address that is probably in a Third-World nation.

You'll soon be able to recognize such scam efforts....just hit "Delete" and you'll be fine. Sorry for this commercial break from logo design issues. This is a very important issue and I wanted people to be aware.