 |
|
Serving Houston, Sugar Land, Katy, Richmond, Pearland, Missouri City, and
Stafford
Call Us At
(281) 766-HELP |
|
Welcome To
The Better Systems Podcast!
 
February 13, 2010 Show Notes (PodcastIT003):
"What is Phishing?" Phishing (spelled "phishing") is where
you are tricked into going to a malicious website that has the look
and feel of your intended website. This is done by sending you an
email that looks to be from a legitimate source, or this can be done
when you are using a search engine on the internet. Once you go to
these sites, you may enter your username and password as you would
normally do. The malicious sites are often portrayed to be online
banks and online retailers. Their goal is to steal your information
to get access to your accounts at these sites, or to use the
information obtained to commit identity theft. Favorite target
websites are eBay, Amazon, PayPal, and your banking institution.
How can you protect yourself to make sure you are going to a valid
website? There are a few things that can help you out.
First, at the site address on newer web browsers, you will see that
the main website address is bolded so that, at a glance, you can see
if you are at the real location. For example, you may see paypal.com
in bold black letter while the rest is grayed out. This shows that
you are at the real paypal.com website. If you see something else,
such as xyz123.com bolded and a portion that says paypal grayed out,
then you are not at the real paypal site. So pay attention while you
are browsing and use this tool to help you out.
Second, when you get an email asking to click on a link, or even a
link in a web browser, just put your mouse over the link without
clicking your mouse button. You should see either a popup near your
mouse on emails or something in the lower portion of your web
browser, that will show you where the link will take you. The words
in the actual page can be misleading as those can be forged. The
actual link is what you need to focus on - that is the pop up or the
portion at the bottom of the web browser I just mentioned. If you
see 4 sets of numbers separated by 3 dots, this is most likely a
phishing site. This is also the same if you see a lot of gibberish.
It would be best just to type the address manually to get to the
desired website.
Last, there are a few services online that will help by giving you a
visual cue when you are using search engines to find a website.
First, you would need to download and install the free service.
Then, the next time you do an internet search you will see green,
yellow, or red icon next to the website links. These should be self
explanatory as to what they mean.
This Week's Better System Tech Tips: We suggest using the Web of
Trust as one of the free services I just mentioned. One thing that
helps distinguish them from other sites is that the green, yellow,
and red icons next to search engine sites are there because of
people like you. They use a special program algorithm so that "bad"
people can not make their site show up with a green icon. However,
the best feature is the ability to block websites unfriendly to
children. This is one of the choices you can make when installing
the program. Go to the show notes for this episode and click on the
link to go to The Web of Trust website and download it today - or
you can go there directly by going to
www.mywot.com (spelled
mywot). It's free and will help to protect you from phishing sites.
Check Out Our Other Show Notes!
My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-c744dad21fa26dc837ce88662dc12dff}
|
|
