Online Security is Being Tampered With: Phishing Scams are on the Rise

Online security is being compromised everyday. Phishing scams are becoming a regular nuisance and a huge threat amongst Internet users, Internet providers, major online establishments and government agencies. Up to this point in time these attempts have proved to be immeasurably destructive on the world financial status.

Computer hackers are continuously coming up with new techniques in effort to steal the identity of online users. This places a lot of pressure on Internet providers to boost their online security
procedures and software. Top providers have to constantly stay up-to-date with the latest trends executed by these Internet predator’s and quickly come up with resolutions as these issues arise. Symantec Corp an Internet Security firm reported 8 million phishing attempts last year. Phishing is up 300 percent from 2004 and 5 percent of all Internet users world-wide fall victim.

Phishing is described as the act of sending an email to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. The email directs the user to visit a Web site where they are asked to update personal information, such as passwords, credit card, social security and bank account numbers that the legitimate organization already has. The Web site, however, is bogus and set up only to steal the user’s information. (Webopedia) Ebay, America Online and Sun Trust bank are amongst the many major corporations constantly under attack.

Telekom Chief Executive Kai-Uwe Ricke who recently spoke at an Internet security conference stated that, “world-wide there are around 60 billion email’s sent every day” (Berlin Reuters) and the majority is labeled as spam. This raises the bar for email users to be especially cautious when responding to email labeled with titles of organizations that they do business with and double check with them to verify the authenticity of email’s which claim to be sent by them when personal information is being requested.

Sometimes you can become puzzled by some of these email’s because they are cleverly worded and can lead you to believe that you have an account set up with an entity that you have no idea of but it is strictly a lie so don’t be confused by these attempts. These email’s will try to convince you that your account information needs to be clarified or your credit card agency is not accepting the charge for your monthly billing cycle and that your account will be suspended if you don’t follow the provided link and update your information. If you ever click on these links they can be very deceiving because they are usually perfect replicas of the sites that they are impersonating and most of the time the Web address includes the name of the organization.

Phishing is also referred to as brand spoofing or carding. These email’s are sent out in massive numbers expecting that they will be opened and acted on by at least a small percentage of the customers who are considered as “bait” that have accounts set up with various large entities. So keep your eyes open for schemes of this sort which jeopardize your online security.


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