Phishing: Examples and its prevention method

Phishing is a process of illegally acquiring personal and sensitive information from people such as credit card information, usernames and passwords. They may seem like web sites from a trustworthy entity but in fact, as soon as the victim inputs his or her information the phishing site will record all of the information and will exploit those information to fraud on the victim.

An example of a phishing site.



Ways to prevent phishing scams: Incorrect company name. Often the web address of a phishing site looks correct, but actually contains a common misspelling of the company name or a character or symbol before or after the company name. Look out for tricks such as substituting the number "1" for the letter "l" in a web address (for example, www.paypa1.com instead of www.paypal.com).

• Missing slash. To verify that you're on a legitimate Yahoo! site, make sure a forward slash (" / ") appears after "yahoo.com" in the Address bar
  
• If you not sure if a site is authentic, don't use your real password to sign in. If you enter a fake password and appear to be signed in, you're likely on a phishing site. Do not enter any more information; close your browser. Keep in mind, though, that some phishing sites automatically display an error message regardless of the password you enter. So, just because your fake password is rejected, don't assume the site is legitimate.


• Use a web browser with anti-phishing detection. eg, Internet explorer and Mozilla firefox