Apr 29 2009
Phishing is Another Form of Identity Theft
As a pretty new technique, phishing is being utilized by criminals who are committed to getting ahold of your identity or gaining access to other personal information. They do this by putting out bulk emails that imitate emails sent out by actual companies, in hopes to get you to click on links which will take you to a website whose sole purpose is to get your information away from you.
With the phishing technique, criminals come up with emails that look just like emails companies that you do business with might send out. With these fake emails, you are told to click on links that have you end up on a fake site which too looks like the real thing. Therefore, the thieves are hoping you are tricked into giving out your valuable information for the thief to use. This is a perfect reason to use a identity theft fraud protection solution.
The main stream media has been giving more scrutiny to this criminal activity because they are becoming more popular. The whole phishing process has become very advanced, which is making it very hard to tell if you have received a phishing email, or have found yourself on a phishing site. Therefore, it is very vital that you be aware of emails you receive and the links you may be clicking.
These phishing schemes might be thought of as a form of evolved spam. Traditional spam is an attempt to trick you to click through to a website and buy something. But phishing takes this to a much different level as they are trying to fool you into going to a site and giving criminals your personal information.
This means that once they have gotten your personal information, the criminal then has complete freedom to do anything they want with it. For example, if you were to give out your login information to your online banking, the thief could gain access to your online account and transfer all of your money to their bank account.
These criminal sites are active for only a very short period of time, which means that even if you were able to notify the appropriate agencies about the criminal activity, chances are nothing would happen. All the criminals need is a short bit of time to convince a small number of victims to provide the information the thieves are seeking, then they disappear.
And because most of the big phishing schemes are run by foreign criminals, even if the authorities could could figure out where the criminals are, there is little that they can do. Your only defense to a phishing scheme is to not click on any link in an email and to use a good protect your identity solution.
This phishing scheme is just one more way thieves are using complex strategies to steal your personal information so that they can use it for evil reasons. Keep a sharp eye out for emails that appear to come from a financial institution or other business you are familiar with. If you want to be safe and secure, consider using a LifeLock Review service.
