XP Maximized: 5 Tips To Protect Yourself From Phishing & Pharming

Here's how to protect your identity and your bank account. Most people have received an e-mail from PayPal, eBay, or a financial institution in which the sender asks them to log onto a website to confirm your online user ID and password.

Look out - these are the tactics of Internet con-artists.

[via Maximum PC]

TIP 1:

DON’T ASK, DON’T TELL:
Here’s one absolutely simple way to protect yourself from phishing schemes: Never, ever, ever respond to an e-mail query from a financial institution, auction site, or anyone else asking you to confirm your identity on a website. Legitimate organizations will never ask for this information via e-mail,
so you should never reveal it.

TIP 2:

KNOW YOUR SOURCE: If you’re not a customer of the financial institution or other company that’s pinging you for information, immediately delete the e-mail. Hackers cast a wide net in the hope of catching a few victims.

TIP 3:

RESIST THE URGE:
Never click the hyperlinks contained in an e-mail, even if the correspondence looks perfectly legit; for that matter, even if the correspondence is legit. It’s a habit you need to get into, because masking the URLs embedded in HTML code is child’s play for a hacker or other malcontent. Type the URL into your browser, instead, and then bookmark the site for future reference.

TIP 4:

FAKE LEFT One way to reduce the chances of being taken in by a fraudulent website is to first provide a password you know to be false. If the site accepts the bogus password, you know there’s something amiss.

TIP 5:

USE PROTECTION Malcontents exploit browser vulnerabilities and use viruses to get your data. Keep your web browser and your antivirus software’s virus definitions up to date at all times. Most virus software has an auto-update feature for this purpose. If you’re using Firefox, you can configure it to check for updates either automatically or on demand: Click Tools, then Options, and then choose Advanced and scroll down to Software Update. To update Internet Explorer, click Tools, then Windows Update, and follow the directions on Microsoft’s Windows Update website.

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