Phishing

          I've never been a fisherman, although I think it could be a fun and relaxing activity.  However, if I were to ever try deep sea fishing, I'd probably spend most of my time hanging over the rail  losing everything I had eaten for the last week.  My dad never had the free time to spend fishing and none of my friends growing up were fishermen.  Later in life my brother started and he and his wife enjoyed many good times together fishing.

          But now there is a new "sport" with a similar name which is very dangerous and is invading most of our homes and lives.  It is called Phishing.

          According to the dictionary, phishing is the attempt to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money), often for malicious reasons, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. The word is a neologism created as a homophone of fishing due to the similarity of using a bait in an attempt to catch a victim.  How do you like those big words? 

          If you aren't overly diligent you could be like a fish and get caught and lose money and maybe even your identity.  These schemes have been around as long as e-mail, but recently they have become much more sophisticated and tempting.  If you spend any time on the internet, using e-mail or the social media, you could end up being a victim.

          Now most of us have "won" millions in overseas lotteries.  We have been offered millions by foreign family members who need to get their money out of their country.  We have been offered jobs as mystery shoppers and the scams go on and on.  But these are easy to ignore unless you are dumb or looking for get rich quick schemes - as some folks are.

          But today phishing has become a little different.  In previous years it was usually easy to spot one of these attempts because the offers you received by e-mail often contained misspelled words or used bad English.  Sometimes the visuals they used were very poor.  It was rather obvious that they were fake and few would be tempted to click on any of their links.  And if one did, most folks were wise enough not to complete the resulting screens which asked for credit card numbers or social security numbers or other sensitive information.  Unfortunately, some were not that wise and got burnt.  And even if you didn't fill out this requested information, just answering the e-mail might have compromised your account or added some malware to your computer.

          But when it comes to stealing money or your private information, internet crooks soon learn to get much more clever.  They are cleaning up their e-mails and making them much more realistic than ever before.  How many of you have been receiving offers of free gift cards from Walmart, CVS or Giant or other big name companies?  They look so real and who doesn't want a free gift?  They are so tempting.  But often you can get your first danger alarm by looking at who the actual e-mail was sent by.  And most times you will see that it isn't from the company offering the free gift.  Don't risk replying or you might get a free gift - malware implanted in your computer.

          Some of the more recent ones appear to come from UPS or FedEx telling you that they tried to deliver a package to you but you weren't home.  And if you want the delivery you must respond and give them vital information.  Now, were you even expecting a package?  And if you were, a respectable delivery service would leave a note in your front door, not ask you for personal information online.  Don't be taken!

          Recently I received an e-mail from "Apple" informing me that "my" order was placed.  Since we had experienced a similar real fraud situation involving an Apple product two years ago, I was very suspicious.  I checked our credit card account, our bank account and our iTunes account and saw no evidence of any purchase.  So I decided to ignore it rather than click on the link provided to cancel the order.  Two times that week I received additional e-mails giving me a receipt for "my order" of $103.20.  All of these looked genuine with links to use to cancel the order.  They even used the Apple symbol. But no way did I want to risk clicking on these links, even to cancel an order which I didn't place.  I finally was able to get a call through to Apple.  They informed me that these were clever phishing e-mails.  They wanted me to forward them to their fraud department because other customers were also getting them.  I did that and haven't heard anything since, although these e-mails have stopped.

          Then a few days ago I received an e-mail from my bank saying that somebody had tried to access our accounts and that as a result our accounts were now locked.  To get them open I was to click on a link that was provided and enter all my information.  I knew my bank would not handle such an attempt in this manner.  I logged into my bank account and found that it was not locked.  I wonder how many folks were victim of this clever phishing attempt.

          Who knows what will come next.  But I've learned to not reply to links on such e-mails.  I also no longer reply to links sent to me in the name of folks who are on my mailing list.  Often these names have somehow been hijacked and are sent out in their name to create harm by adding malware to your computer.

         The electronic age is great, but it has provided many new ways for crooks to make a living and we need to be very diligent and careful.  It is so easy to get caught.  Many have been victims and I hope that you never will be.  Be wise and suspicious.  Remember, there are many bad folks out there in e-space.