Phishing

We all know Fishing . But What is Phishing ? Phishing is one of the fastest growing identity thefts on the Internet. Phishing is a technique used to gain personal information for purposes of identity theft, using fraudulent e-mail messages that appear to come from legitimate businesses. These authentic-looking messages are designed to fool recipients into divulging personal data such as account numbers and passwords, credit card numbers and Social Security numbers.

Isn't that really scary ? For Example, You get a message which looks like to come from someone@citibank.com , asking you for your Credit Card Details,Social Security Number etc for verification, but it turns out to be from someone fraudelent trying to cheat you.

How Big is it ? The Federal Trade Commission reported that 9.9 million U.S. residents have been victims of identify theft during the past year, costing businesses and financial institutions $48 billion and consumers $5 billion in out-of-pocket expenses.

How to prevent it ? Found a nice article from Anti-phishing Working Group on how to prevent this. Here is the Link from Microsoft's website on prevention.

Be Cautious before divulging any personal Information , we all know how dangerous the internet can be.