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What is Phishing?

Phishing attacks use 'spoofed' e-mails and fraudulent websites designed to fool recipients into divulging personal financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames and passwords, social security numbers, etc. By hijacking the trusted brands of well-known banks, online retailers and credit card companies, phishers are able to convince up to 5% of recipients to respond to them.

• Treat all email with suspicion
• Never use a link in an email to get to any web page. If you must go there, type the URL (web address) directly into your browser's address bar.
• Never send personal or financial information to any one via email.
• Regularly log into your online accounts
• Scrutinize your bank, credit and debit card statements and ensure that all transactions are legitimate.
• Ensure that all of your software is up to date - for instance, if you use Microsoft's Windows, run Windows Update every day when you first connect to the internet.
• If you must use your financial information online, ensure that you have adequate insurance against fraud.
• Utilize the Trusted Zone facility in Internet Explorer browsers to allow active scripting only from web sites that you implicitly trust, and set the Internet Zone to prompt you to allow or disallow active scripting in sites that you do not implicitly trust. This will prevent the unknown operation of these malicious scripts which are involved in these phishing scams.
• Use a Pop-up blocker. Such a program would prevent the display of pages born with their address bar spoofed. Add only implicitly trusted sites to the 'allow pop ups' section of any blocker.