Gone Phishing? Take Caution! Phishing Emails Are On The Rise...

A phishing e-mail is an e-mail sent by a hacker designed to fool the         
recipient into downloading a virus, giving up their credit card number, 
personal information (like a social security number), or account or login 
information to a particular web site. Often these e-mails are well designed 
to look exactly like an official notification from the site they are trying to   
emulate.

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For example, a recent phishing e-mail was circulated that appeared to 
come from Facebook stating that videos or photos of Osama Bin Laden’s 
death were posted online. These e-mails looked exactly like a legitimate 
Facebook e-mail and even appeared to come from “Facebookmail.com.”  
Once you clicked on the e-mail the phishing site would attempt to install a 
virus on your machine. 


And now, due to recent security breaches with Sony and e-mail marketer 
Epsilion, phishing attacks are going to increase – and they are going to get 
more sophisticated and harder to distinguish from legitimate e-mails. 
That’s because the hackers that were able to access the private databases 
of the above mentioned companies now have the name, e-mail and         
interests of the subscribers, and in some cases birthdays, addresses and 
more. That means a phishing e-mail can be personalized with relevant  
information that the user provided to Sony, making the e-mail appear to be 
more legitimate and the user more likely to click on the links provided and 
take the actions requested. 


Now more than ever it’s critical that you are wary of e-mail notifications and the actions they request you take. Even having good anti-virus software installed won’t protect you if you give 
your account information away freely!