What is phishing?
Phishing is an email fraud method in which criminals send out legitimate-looking email requesting personal and
financial details from unsuspecting people. The messages normally appear to come from well-known and
trustworthy Web sites. Web sites that are often used in phishing attacks include eBay, PayPal, Yahoo, MSN, and
America Online as well as the sites of a lot of big banks and retailers.
They want your identity
Typically, the fraudulent emails direct victims to counterfeit Web pages that look identical to the companies' sites in order to fool you into submitting personal, financial, or password data. Phishing emails will almost always tell you to click a link that takes you to a site where your personal information is requested. Legitimate organizations would probably never request this sort of information via email.
If you submit the information anyway, the scammer will be able to access your account and you are vulnerable to identity theft. Your money may be transferred away into the criminal's account or used to make online purchases.
Phishing is spreading
A couple of years back phishers mostly targeted big American financial institutions, but nowadays phishing attacks have spread to other countries and languages as well and also target smaller companies. Swedish bank Nordea has suffered one of the biggest publicly known phishing frauds in history. Over 8 million kronor ($1,200,000) disappeared in three months as a result of a tailor-made attack launched by Russian criminals. Reports indicated that 250 customers had become victims.
The number of phishing attacks tracked by industry association the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) has multiplied 100-fold between January 2004 and May 2006 and the number has continued to grow since then. In April 2007 APWG detected 55,643 new phishing sites while 11,121 phishing sites were deteched in April 2006.
Phishing is mostly associated with spam, whereby thousands of messages are sent out at once in the hope that a few people will take the bait. Therefore, phishing attempts often appear to come from sites and companies with which you do not even have an account.
The word "phishing" refers to the Internet fraudsters using email lures to "fish" for passwords and financial data from the sea of Internet users.
For more information on avoiding phishing scams, please visit this antiphishing guide.
The BullGuard Spamfilter protects you against phishing
The BullGuard Spamfilter is effective at detecting phishing attempts. Every email is analysed in multiple ways to determine whether the email is genuine, spam or a phishing attempt. In addition, the BullGuard Spamfilter is constantly updated to block the latest known phishing emails.
When in doubt, BullGuard users can always get in touch with BullGuard Support, who will help you sort out any security related question 24/7. With BullGuard you get the most comprehensive phishing protection on the market.
