Thursday, November 6, 2008

CYBER-SECURITY TIPS

Who wants to go phishing?
Consider this: If you receive a phone call from someone and they said, “Hi, this is (insert name here). I need to log on to your computer to clean a virus; could you give me your password please?” What would you do? No, this isn’t where you blame your kids for using your computer and catching a virus. This is a hypothetical question. It’s called ‘phishing’ and it happens. Hmmmm…“phishing happens”…maybe an idea for a new t-shirt with a big yellow smiley face on it.

If you do your banking on-line you have probably received emails from your bank warning of various schemes to steal your account information. These phishing schemes sometimes arrive as an official looking email with a link to what you ‘think’ is your bank’s web page. It is very easy to duplicate a webpage, so the ‘bad guys’ just make a fake page; you proceed to login; and presto, they have your username and password. They can then logon to the ‘real’ bank’s web page and buy that Harley they’ve always wanted.....using your money.

A simplified example yes, but food for thought. Check out the link below for information about fishing....err, I mean PHISHING. J

http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/tips/ST04-014.html

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