Phishing Threats Triple

[Rich Tate]

Phishing threats are not only on the rise lately, it has shot through the roof. What is really scary is when you see figures like this:

Cyveillance also uncovered hundreds of thousands of credit and debit card account numbers in its sweeps of IRC channels and server logs of botnet operators. In the first two months of the year, the company's monitors found more than 320,000 credit and debit card numbers, more than 1.4 million potential Social Security numbers and approximately 1.3 million account log-on credentials.

 

[DoomRulz]

Damn man, that is some scary stuff...I swear, a person can't use the internet these days w/o having to constantly look over their shoulder you know?

I use the internet every single day and I'm proud to say that in every online purchase I've ever made, I haven't had any problems with identity theft. You know those pop-ups you get when you're surfing and it says you can get a free laptop, PS3, etc... if you participate in X amount of offers? Ya, I tend to avoid those for these very reasons.

I remember back in the 90s and early 2000s a person was suspect to the same crimes if they signed up for membership at a porn site...is this still true? Or is this phishing business different from that?

 

[jmackay]

Phishing ("fishing") usually involves a fake address like: www.paypal.fakescamsite.com . They setup the site to look identical to the real website and then when you try to login, they save your login username/password, use it on the REAL website, and jack your money/whatever.

So thats why you need to be extra careful when looking at emails and warn those who aren't as computer savvy to just delete any email and go directly to the real website/call the company if they think there is a problem.