Security & Privacy

Do you know what phishing is? As its name suggests, it’s a way to “fish” for dupes, or people who fall for a scam. Generally, phishing attempts come by e-mail; you know, those messages claiming to be from your bank, or from eBay or PayPal, asking you to log in and update your payment information. In some cases, the “phishers” are good; the URLs they use may look real, but what you see is actually masking a different URL, perhaps leading you to a server in China or Russia.

Phishing is all about getting your credit card to steal money from you. It’s not small-change scamming, but rather organized crime. It’s mighty effective, too. Intego Personal Antispam has built-in filters to protect you from phishing by sorting these e-mails into your spam folder, and Intego Internet Security Barrier Dual Protection offers this type of filtering both for Mac OS X and your Windows installation.

But it’s a good idea to understand what phishing is, and become savvy enough to spot a phishing URL when you see one. Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University have developed a game called Anti-Phishing Phil, where you can learn exactly how phishing works and how to protect yourself from these bogus web sites.

Remember one cardinal rule: neither your bank, eBay, Amazon or any other company will ever ask you by e-mail to log in to your account and enter your credit card information. In some cases, if your credit card has expired, they may ask you to update your information, but you’ll know that the card is no longer valid. When in doubt, log in normally (not using a URL you get in an e-mail) and go to your account settings. You can be sure that you’ll be on the right server that way.