Phishing

[Justice Hog]

I just spent the last two days at a seminar in Dewey Beach, DE discussing legal issues and computers. Today a fraud analyst from E-Bay/Pay Pal stopped in and told us about "Phishing". I thought I'd share that information with you all.

Some of you may receive an email purported from E-Bay or some other company informing you that because of some internal error, you must provide information to make sure your account is not deleted. You will then be referred to a web-site that looks an awful lot like E-bay (and/or some other business) where they ask you to enter information like:

a) Your name;
b) Your social security #;
c) Your D.O.B.; and
d) Your credit card number or checking account information.

Once you do this, you will be the victim of identity theft and the culprit will bilk you out of a ton of money. This is called, in the industry, "Phishing".

The message he conveyed today is:

Please understand that AT NO TIME will a business EVER ask you to provide such information....and if some business ever does, it will likely result in fraud.

I wanted to pass this along to each of you because I saw the web-sites that were used....and they really looked like "official" (E-bay, and other) sites. It would be really easy for someone to fall prey to that.

Finally, to help prevent this from happening to you, E-Bay offers an "E-Bay toolbar" to add to your interent explorer. If you are ever referred to a site that is not an accurate site, the toolbar is set up to warn you.

You can obtain this toolbar by going to:

E-Bay Toolbar

[hailskins666]

thanks for the warning.

but looking at the title of the thread, i thought it was going to be about that awful band.