Cyber-Bargains

Phishing is a threat to every internet user as it gains personal financial information through sending fraudulent email. Besides, phishing also can the personal information when the users doing personal financial information through online banking or e-commerce transactions.

The example of a phishing e-mail is an official e-mail from a fictional bank. The phishing e-mail sent to the internet user on behalf of the bank which requests the user to send personal financial information such as credit card, social security, bank account number, passwords and others. Lately, I got a phishing scam email pretending to be Maybank2u. It required me to enter my details including my LOGIN PASSWORD. Of course I am not stupid enough to give them that and moreover the terrible grammar has worked as a warning alarm to me. However I gave it a try and luckily Mozilla prompted me the web as a phishing web. (good reason to use Firefox right?)

There are some ways that the internet users must know in order to avoid from becoming a victim of phishing.

Obviously, the users must be suspicious with any email with urgent requests for personal financial information unless the email is digitally signed. For instance, an e-mail sent by fictional bank which contain misspelling word usually is phishing e-mail. The users should never supply their personal information via e-mail. The users must always turn on both desktop and network firewalls. Firewalls can help the users prevent from the suspicious malicious code entering the users’ computer and browser.

Another easy way to prevent a phishing attack is keep the anti-virus software up-to-date. There are many products on the market usually are included in anti-virus software. This software program usually using filter which searches the content in the message that may be carries phishing software. Besides these, the users must not enter any sensitive or financial information into pop-up windows even it looks like official. This is because this pop-up window usually has no way to check its security certificate. Many of them are usually contain phishing scams which will gain the information and damage the computer.

The internet user must remember Think Before You Click. This can help the user from phishing threat.