Phishing and Pharming

What are they?

Phishing

Phishing is the term used for luring the unsuspecting into revealing personal and/or financial information via the internet. Criminals and opportunists set up emails and websites which pretend to belong to a legitimate company asking you to verify personal information that these organizations should already have on file.

Beware of any email that asks you to verify your

  • account information
  • user or login information
  • date of birth
  • bank or PIN details
  • credit card details

The email request will commonly include a threat that failure to update or validate information will render your 'account' inactive or frozen in some way. NO legitimate organization would do this.

Links inside emails will often take the unsuspecting to a site, which looks identical to that of the organization. In some cases, the criminal uses a technique, similar to that used in bank machine scams, where a fake face is put onto the site, directing the unsuspecting to a second site where the information is gathered.

Pharming

Pharming is when a web site has been taken over by a hacker or, you accidently type in the wrong web site name and get a similar looking site.

For example, you think you are typing in www.yourbank.com but you actually typed www.yourrbank.com. This simple mistake took you to a site that looks identical to your bank site.

You are then told that your password has expired and you need to fill out the pop up form to log back into your account.

You fill out the form, supplying all of your personal banking information, and submit the form. You then attempt to relog into your account but you still can't.

Why not?

You have just given the bad guy all of your banking and personal information!

Originally, pharming scams were less common, but of late there has been an upswing in their presence on the web as they are an excellent source of information for the identity thief.

Check this statement provided by HSBClinks to external site or click any of the links to the right for more indepth information about phishing and pharming.