Former telecom monopoly in Denmark, TDC, says in its latest press release that phishing e-mails are increasing.
A phishing-mail is an e-mail with the sole purpose of trying to fish personal information from you, like username and password to an e-mail account, bank account, etc. It might also cut straight to the point and try to lure your credit card details by convincing you to enter them on a site, or something “bad” might happen to your e-mail account or stuff like that.
The spamfilter at TDC catches between 300 and 500 million e-mails every month, but it also catches phishing-mails. It’s said that 1 out of 300 e-mails sent on the Internet is a phishing mail. Studies show that users are more inclined to react (get caught) on a phishing-mail rather than ordinary spam. That explains why we are seeing more and more phishing e-mails.
Lars Højbjerg, TDC technical security advisor, has the following 5 advices regarding phishing:
- Be critical when receiving e-mails asking you for personal information like credit card details or username/password.
- Do not give up personal information (credit card, passwords etc.) in an e-mail.
- If, in an e-mail, you’re asked to enter personal information on a website, do not click the link in the e-mail. Instead, enter the website address directly in the browser as you know it, to make sure you go to the right site and not a phishing site.
- If you’re in doubt about the authenticity of an e-mail or website, contact the real company (that you know) and ask them.
- When you, on a website, is handing over personal information, make sure that you’re on a secure line. You can check this by looking at the first characters of the website address, if it starts with “https” and not just “http”, then it means you’re secured. Usually there’s also a padlock somewhere in your browser, status bar or next to the address bar.
Be careful out there, the Interwebs is not what it used to be!
phishing scams are all around us. the best thing to do is to invest in a av solution to protect your data. its much better than to have your bank account empty. i use bitdefender internet security 2009 and i am very pleased of it. it has a very good anti-phishing solution incorporated.
.-= Edward Stream´s last blog ..When day becomes night =-.
I never ends does it?
We will soon need computers to run the protection we need on our computers. Sounds strange but think about it, would be so much nicer if people had better things to spend their time on.
.-= Extreme John´s last blog ..10 Reasons it Sucks when Twitter Goes Down =-.