Computer Identity Theft - How to Avoid Phishing Scams
As more and more people get personal computers and an internet connection the potential for identity theft increases. Olden day identity theft might have involved going through someone’s garbage looking for personal details like their social security or credit card numbers. Today, with the help of a computer and some fake email ids, an identity thief can gain access to the same information. This can be done on a worldwide scale and opens up the potential of such a crime. In fact, identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in the past few years.
Although it might appear like a high tech crime, the most common form of computer identity theft is in fact one of the oldest crimes going. It is a simple confidence trick that can be blatantly obvious or elaborately cunning depending on your experience of these things.
So, the most common types of identity theft target an individuals fear or greed. These are two very powerful emotions that will make people take action. Once these emotions are triggered, the identity theft simply tells the potential victim what to do.
A common fear that many people that use computers have is that they will be a target of computer identity theft. They use computers a bit but know that there are some smart people out in the world who can do all sorts of things with computers. One day they receive an email from their bank saying that their bank account was hacked into last night. Please enter their details and then change the password so this can’t happen again.
After the initial shock you begin to wonder what has happened to the account - has money been taken out ? You first reaction is to login to your account and see what the damage might be. This is also the advice you will get in the email and they also make it convenient for you to login to your account by providing a login box below the letter.
Some of these emails are obviously fakes. They don’t look very convincing. The email has no genuine logo or header of the company in question. The wording in the email may have spelling mistakes in them or bad grammar. The sending email id may come from a free email id source like hotmail. However, some are incredibly accurate and quite convincing. It is important to remain wary of any such emails regardless of how official they look.
Phishing scams work by presenting an official looking email or directing the intended victim to an authentic looking website. This is the process of building trust or confidence. With trust established the thief will ask for important details from the potential victim. This may be anything from bank account details to a social security number. They can then wreak havoc on their finances or apply for things like credit cards using their identity.
The common practice for most companies is never to ask for personal details via an email. If you receive anything like this it is a hoax and you are best advised to delete it. If a website does ask for personal information it should be secure. A secure website will have a lock logo on it which will lead to information about how they secure their website. Also the name of the particular web page will start with a ‘https’.
