Stealing Personal Information Through Phishing
April 20th, 2009Quite often we get an email in our inbox from a company we are familiar with, letting us know we need to update the personal data on their website. But, can you really be sure that the company you know about is the one requesting the information, and not an identity thief?
Identity thieves designing websites to pass themselves off as a company or credit company is a problem that is growing. The only reason these sites exist is to trick you into giving out your personal data. The combination of making use of websites and emails to dupe you into giving out private data is called “phishing”. Phishing is a great reason to always be making use of a identity theft fraud protection company.
It is not as easy as you might think to spot a phishing email. They most often appear to be very real and will spoof the type of an email you normally receive from the real company. However, when you click on a link in a phishing email, you are taken to a site which has the sole purpose of stealing your identity.
Phishing websites are going to have the same look and feeling of the website for the real company. The best way to figure out the difference between the impostor and genuine website is to carefully look at the site’s address. The sham site usually will have a portion of name in its address, but it will also have extra characters that give it away.
The organizations that are behind the phishing emails and sites are most times experienced thieves. These criminals can afford to use a bunch of cash and resources to design very realistic sites and emails because there is a lot of money to be made in stealing identities. They are out to steal from you, so it is always a very good idea to be using a identity theft alert service.
Because they ultimately want to steal your personal information, or other information that they can use to make money, they want to come across as real. They will have the same design and feel that the real company uses, which includes real slogans and logos.
Because the phishing emails and sites can be so good, it is often times hard for people to tell that they are not on the real website. The more effort the criminals put into the design of these duping emails and websites, the more likely they will trick naive consumers.
In order to never fall victim to a phishing attack, you should never ever click on a link in an email. If you think of the genuine nature of the email, then you should visit the website like you normally would. The best defense against these phishing attacks is to never click on the email link in the first place, and by making use of a protection against identity theft company.