Phishing Information

Phishing is the luring of an internet user to reveal personal details (i.e. user name, passwords, account information) on a fake web page or email form pretending to come from a legitimate company.

Phishing emails can:

• Appear legitimate — Phishing emails can appear to be from a legitimate web address and trusted online source however, you should not simply rely on the name or address in the "From" field in the email header. This can be easily altered.
  
  
• Ask for personal information — Phishing emails usually contain a very generic greeting and ask you to confirm the authenticity of your account information or claim that your account information has been compromised.
  
• Appear Urgent — Wording in phishing e-mail messages is usually polite and accommodating in tone. It almost always tries to get you to respond to the message or to click the link that is included. To increase the number of responses, criminals attempt to create a sense of urgency so that people immediately respond without thinking.
  
  
• Link to counterfeit web sites — Phishing emails often direct you to a counterfeit web site designed to look real, but which actually collects personal information for illegal use. In many cases there is no easy way to determine that you are on a phony web site because the URL will contain the name of the institution it is mimicking, however, below is a list of tips to help you identify counterfeit websites:
  
  
  • The https: at the beginning of the URL indicates a secured Web site.
    
    
  • A small lock should be displayed in the right corner of the webpage on the status bar.
    
    
  • The URL should not be extremely long.
    
    
  • The URL should not contain two .com addresses within the same URL.
    
    
  • The links that you are urged to click contain all or part of a real company's name and are usually "masked," meaning that the link you see does not take you to that address but somewhere different, usually a spoofed Web site.
    
    
  • Notice in this example using Outlook that resting the pointer on the link reveals the real address in the box with the yellow background. The string of cryptic numbers looks nothing like the company's Web address or URL, a sure sign that should make you suspicious.