Phishing Filter Safety

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In Boy Scouts, the first badge I earned was a fishing badge. I caught a crappie! Of course, we all know that fishing is a great pastime. But what many people don’t know is that when “fishing” is spelled PHishing, it’s a potentially very dangerous thing.

A Phishing scam is one in which a Web site collects information that you willingly enter. Now, when I say “willingly,” I mean just that. It is of course unintentional on your part that you are entering the information on a bogus site. These scams often come about via emails. Let’s say you get an email from what appears to be your bank… or PayPal. It says something about needing to verify your account information. Many people click the link. That link takes them to a site which is NOT their bank or PayPal, even if it appears to be. Then, they could inadvertantly enter things like bank numbers, social security numbers, and the like. Now the bad guys have all the information necessary to not only take your money… but possibly steal your identity and ruin your credit, as well.

The biggest rule of thumb is to never click on a link within an email. If you do receive something like this, and are concerned it could possibly be from your financial institution, open your Web browser. Manually type in the bank address and log in that way. Do not click the link in the email. As a matter of fact, many banks and savings associations are no longer even putting any links in emails, for just this reason.

So yes… turn on (or leave on) those phishing filters in IE 7 and Firefox. It’s just another layer of protection for you, to help keep you safe. It doesn’t harm anything. It doesn’t interrupt or change your browsing speed and experience. What possible reason would you have for not wanting that protection?

Another good way to help keep you safe from phishers is to use OpenDNS. This is a service you can run on your computer or network without having to install anything. Instead of using your ISP DNS server to resolve a Web site, you would use this service. Not only does it speed up your Internet experience, it also provides a phishing filter!

Bottom line… protect yourself. Every layer you place between you and the bad guys is a good thing. Compute smart… compute safe.

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[tags]phishing, email scam, fraud, identity theft[/tags]