How They Attack

Phishing is essentially an online con game and phishers are nothing more than tech-savvy con artists and identify thieves. They use SPAM, malicious Web sites, email messages and instant messages to trick people into divulging sensitive information, such as bank and credit card accounts.

How Do You Know

* Phishers, pretending to be legitimate companies, may use email to request personal information and direct recipients to respond through malicious web sites
* Phishers tend to use emotional language using scare tactics or urgent requests to entice recipients to respond
* The phish sites can look remarkably like legitimate sites because they tend to use the copyrighted images from legitimate sites
* Requests for confidential information via email or Instant Message tend to not be legitimate
* Fraudulent messages are often not personalized and may share similar properties like details in the header and footer