Fighting malware and spam

Phishing

Con trick trying to steal money/personal information, usually by email

Phishing is any attempt to trick people out of money, or information that can be used to defraud them, over the internet.

The majority of phishing is by email, with huge numbers of spam scams operating in a wide variety of ways. Bank phishing is particularly common, with most banks targeted by some sort of campaign, mostly fake emails attempting to persuade customers to visit spoofed versions of the bank's site and provide their login information, which will then be used to access and steal from their accounts.

Banks are not the only target - any data that can be used to assist identity theft is potentially valuable and thus a target for phishing, including login details to social networking sites and many other online resources. All types of phishing use some form of social engineering to trick their victims.

Related news articles

Sarkozy bank account raided by cybercrooks

Hackers steal from French president - phish suspected.

22 October 2008

Ham disguised as spam

Webshop makes mass-mailing look like phishing scam.

17 October 2008

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Estimate over $300 million lost annually because data is not shared.

16 October 2008

Google shows off in-house browser beta

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03 September 2008

Net threats cost US $8.5 billion in two years

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05 August 2008

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