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Phishing Scams

As I mentioned previously, phishing scams strike me as particularly nasty since they can be so easy to fall for. Granted, there are those who are likely to be taken in by a 419 scam, but anyone has to be a little suspicious when someone out of the blue is offering you millions of dollars for virtually no effort on your part. As the saying goes, "if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

These phishing scams however, only require that you follow a link to an official-looking site so that you can "verify" your account or whatever other phony excuse these low-life are using to obtain your personal information. I don't have any numbers to back me up, but having seen a number of these phishing scams, I can easily imagine that thousands of people (of not more!) have been suckered into these scams.

Although a certain amount of naivety is required to fall for a 419-style scam (apologies to 419 scam victims!), just about anyone who has no knowledge of phishing scams could easily become a victim. If you happen to have a PayPal account and receive an official-looking e-mail message informing you that there is some indication that someone has been tampering with your PayPal account and that you must log in to "confirm" your account, you are probably going to follow those authentic-looking e-mail messages to an authentic-looking web site where you will attempt to log in using your PayPal login information, only to find that there is some kind of problem or error with the login process. By that time, it is too late because the phishing scammers have captured your PayPal login info.

That's the dead give away where these phishing scams are concerned. If you are directed to a web site to "confirm" or "verify" your account (or whatever) and you attempt to log into that site and encounter some type of problem that does not allow you to log in, chances are good that you have been had. At that point you must contact the company or organization that the scammers are impersonating immediately to let them know what has happened. Don't waste time with e-mail messages, call them on the phone and do not delay! I would also log immediately into my account on the genuine web site of the company or organization and change my password without delay to keep the scammers from gaining access to it.

Although the scammers are quite able to construct impressively authentic-looking clones of the PayPal web site, Bank of America web site or any other legitimate web site, they do not have the information needed to give you access to your actual account information. That is the reason you will encounter and error on the login page of the imposter web site when you attempt to log in.

The best way to be prepared for these types of scams is to see some of the e-mail messages yourself. I will include copies of the phishing e-mail messages here that I receive. Use them to become familiar with their tactics and you will be better prepared when one arrives in your e-mail inbox.