What is Phishing?

Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

Generally the intension of hacker is to attract the innocent people by sending an e-mail from fake sites, artificial claiming to be a genuine enterprise in an effort to force the user into surrendering private information such as password, credit card number, and social security number etc; that will be used for identity theft. The innocent users are asked to update their personal information. Generally hackers create this type of fake website to steal the personal information from the users.

Phishing is a difficult enough form of fraud to avoid for most computer users, but when some of the biggest names in the financial industry fail to do their part to detect and eliminate these online scams, consumers often are placed in an untenable situation.
Targets of Phishres:

Well hackers can target any damn thing but generally their eyes are on the following
• Credit card companies.
• Banks & Financial Institutions.
• Online stores.
• Online stock trading companies.
• Auction portals.

How to decide whether it’s Phishing or not?

It is very complex for e-mail recipients to presume what they have in their mailbox. They can't guess whether it is valid e-mail from an organization with which they do transactions. Although the "From" field of the e-mail may have the web site address of that organization, and the hyperlink may also appear, if the sender insists on clicking that hyperlink and unfortunately you click that hyperlink you will land to a spoof Web site. To avoid this situation you must have that sense to identify something phishy because any official web site never ask you to update your personal information simply by sending a hyperlink through the e-mail, use your commonsense and ask yourself a simple question, why the legitimate web site would ask you to update your personal information through a clickable hyperlink via e-mail, since that organization has its own genuine web site?

How to avoid from being victim of Phishing:

• Don't reply to email or pop-up messages that ask for personal or financial information, and don't click on links in the message. Phishers can make links look like they go one place, but that actually send you to a different site.
• Some scammers send an email that appears to be from a legitimate business and ask you to call a phone number to update your account or access a "refund." Because they use Voice over Internet Protocol technology, the area code you call does not reflect where the scammers really are.

If you need to reach an organization you do business with, call the number on your financial statements or on the back of your credit card.

• Use anti-virus and anti-spyware software, as well as a firewall, and update them all regularly.
• Don't email personal or financial information.
• Review credit card and bank account statements as soon as you receive them to check for unauthorized charges.
• Be cautious about opening any attachment or downloading any files from emails you receives, regardless of who sent them.