From eWeek:
You probably think you’re pretty safe from phishing attacks, right? After all, how difficult is it to ignore a “security warning” from a bank you don’t do business with? Or a non-grammatical message purportedly from PayPal that says your account is about to be turned off?
I’ve avoided those scams and even bogus messages “from” banks I actually do business with. Why do they want this information from me? They’ve lost my password? Sure they have.
Still, not everyone is as smart—make that cynical—as you and I. So phishing is likely to be one of the biggest threats to computer users during 2005 and probably for years to come. Spam, which is merely annoying, doesn’t start to compare to full-bore identity theft thanks to entering personal information in the wrong place.
Security experts say pharming is more sinister than phishing
First online crooks went “phishing,” and now they’re getting into “pharming” to reap their harvest of potential identity-theft victims. Pharming is a new scam that automatically directs computer users from a legitimate Web site to a fraudulent copy of…