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Phishing Scams

According to the Anti Phishing Working Group1 phishing :

"attacks use both social engineering and technical subterfuge to steal consumers' personal identity data and financial account credentials. Social-engineering schemes use 'spoofed' e-mails to lead consumers to counterfeit websites designed to trick recipients into divulging financial data such as credit card numbers, account usernames, passwords and social security numbers. Hijacking brand names of banks, e-retailers and credit card companies, phishers often convince recipients to respond. Technical subterfuge schemes plant crimeware onto PCs to steal credentials directly, often using Trojan keylogger spyware."

In short, these scammers will use e-mail campaigns masquerading as other companies using phony e-mails that would appear to by legit and create web sites that look and feel like the real deal with the purpose of getting at information.

Most of this is directed at financial institutions and generally do not effect the small web site owner but in any case doing some very simple things can help protect you, your customer and your creditability.

Until this year the United States had the dubious title of hosting the most phishing sites in the world. However this year the title was past to China. But the big news was the success that was gained in the time that phishing sites are remaining live. Since 2003 the average phishing site was live for 6.4 day and today it survives only 3.4 due to the anti-phishing efforts.

Unfortunately the reality is that thousands of customers get scammed and are still having their identity and personal information filched. So the bottom-line is helping you customers takes you to do several things.

Tips for your customers:

• If you get an e-mail or pop-up message asking for personal or financial information, don't reply, and don't click on the message.
• Use antivirus software and a firewall, and keep them up-to-date.
• Don't e-mail personal or financial information.
• Review credit card and bank account statements as soon as you receive them.
• Be very cautious about opening any attachment or downloading files from e-mails.

Tips for managing your website:

• Use secure socket layers for any communication with sensitive information.
• If you can get a dedicated server.
• Have clearly defined privacy, term of use and spam policies in place for you visitors to reference.
• Never have you customers click a link from their email to access sensitive information on your site, however recommend they copy the link into a new browser window.
• Let people opt-out of non-critical notifications such as advertisements & promotions.
• Give customers a way to verify that an email is sent by you such as a special contact number or email.

These and some other simple actions may be the difference between getting scammed and not.