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Are you all familiar with phishing and what it is?
Phishing, much like the name implies, means that a hacker or some other kind of bad guy, is fishing for information. They want personal, financial and other information. Particularly, they are looking for people that will give up their personal information so they can resell it. They do not usually co-opt you or force you to give up your information. What they usually do, is just trick you into giving up your information for their profit. Believe it or not, there is a large black market for personal information out on the net, and a lot of the folks that engage in phishing activities are looking to make a buck or two selling your information.
I was reading over on search engine land, that there is an Adwordsphishing email going around. The email directs you to update your billing information, your mailing address, enter a new credit card number etc. I have not yet received the email, so I don’t have the text to post on here for you. The main thing about phishing scams, is that they require that you not pay attention to what you’re reading. They count on the implicit trust that you have with Google to take advantage of you.
How can you protect yourself?
There are several things that you can do to protect yourself. One thing, is to look at the url for the page that you’re at. Generally speaking, most Adwords pages are secure, so they’ll have the “https” rather than “http” in the url. Another thing that you can do, is to not click on the links within an email that requests you to update financial information. Rather than clicking on the link, just type out the address where you know you can go to log in and update that way.
If you do receive a phishing email, make sure that you let the vendor know that you’ve received one. It may be that the vendor is already aware of the scam, but what if they’re not yet aware? One thing that you should definitely, not do, is to follow the link in the email and try to be clever. Under no circumstances should you click on the fake email and enter a fake user name and password to try to “foil” the bad guys. It would not be difficult for that website to inject some malicious code to your computer and then the joke would be on you.
Bottom line, phishing scams require you to not be vigilant, so be vigilant. Don’t follow the links in those emails, and take measures to protect your private information.
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