What are phishing scams?

[Will.Spencer]

Abhilash has just contributed What are phishing scams?

Feedback is most appreciated.

Thanks everyone!

[imported_chris]

That was an informative read I think that everyone should be aware of these kinds of scams.

Phishing scams are certainly the most unscrupulous kinds of scamming ever done (those "Nigerian bank" ones are a thing of the past now). I still do receive these emails; they really look real, company logo and all, but if you hover over the link that it tells you to click, you get a different address other than the official site.

[Fry]

I get at least one of these a day. Whether its a phony bank email, or something from someone pretending to my ISP, its really amazing how many of these are going around at the moment.

[pctec]

I fell for a paypal one once...
But I realized what I had done within 1 minute and changed my password right away and informed paypal about it...

[LearnMeTechie]

While I've received hundreds of e-mails like this, I've never given any information out. I figure if the company really wants to get ahold of me, they'll send me another e-mail, and even then I check with them to make sure it's them.

The one that I get most often is paypal.com, which uses different versions of foreign letters you can find in your character map.

Great information.

[Will.Spencer]

Even when I get legitimate e-mails from BofA, I still don't click the links in their e-mail to go to their site.

I'm trained now to always type in the URL's by hand (or use bookmarks).

[sbcal]

That was a good read, thanks for the article. Generally, I receive several of these a day, no matter how I try to "code" my email filter, at least two or three slip through. Definitely, very annoying and tiresome, however, I can spot one of these a mile away. I agree never to click on one of those embedded links, even if you're 99% sure it is legit, there's always that 1%! I rather be safe than sorry.