Protecting Your Online Security-Phishing

Computer Phishing involves attempts to fraudulently acquire personal information on a particular website usually made accessible through e-mails. These may include passwords, usernames, as well as credit card and bank account details.

There are three types of Phishing techniques used online. The first one is called 'Link manipulation'. Through this method phishers use a form of technical deception where a link in an e-mail appears to belong to a genuine website, but in truth the website is a fake representation of the link. These links are made deceivable as phishers use misspelled URLs or sub domains.

The second type of Phishing is called filter evasion. Filter evasion involves the use of images instead of text to redirect users to a website. This type of Phishing is harder to detect for anti-phishing filters because these filters are normally programmed to detect text commonly used in phishing e-mails.

Website forgery is the third type of online phishing. This process occurs when the user visits or is redirected to a website. Once there, the contents of the address bar are modified to a new URL which is a spoof link. This is done by either placing a picture over the URL or by replacing the original address bar with a new one containing a legitimate URL.

Once these phishers manage to obtain the user's personal information such as credit card details or social security numbers, they can create fake accounts under the user's name, thus ruining their credit or deny them access to their own accounts.

The most common way of combating phishing is by eliminating phishing e-mails. This is done by specialized spam filters where they rely on machine learning and natural learning processes to classify phishing e-mails.

Another way is to install anti-phishing features as extensions or toolbars for web browsers. These add-ins will then monitor websites and warn you when a spoof website is detected. The best way to combat phishing is if the user is able to recognize phishing websites and e-mails. If you receive an e-mail saying that an account needs to be verified, always try verifying the e-mail, because most are spoof e-mails. Phishing is becoming an extremely popular way of online fraud because of the modern browsing habits of users, surfing the web freely without caution. It is important that you keep track of your own online activities to combat this problem.

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