Do you know What is Phishing?

How many of you know what is Phishing? Honestly how many of you care enough to know what is phishing, and raise your hand? Just what I thought. Guess what - me too. Until today.

Today I received a potentially innocent email from my 'former' bank, ANZ. It stated that I have tried to log in and failed several times - requires me to log-in and get it verified that it was not me. Sure, why not. so I clicked on the the link, keyed in in all the my account details and password. And voila! im the most stupidest, ill informed and ignorant internet user in my town. I just lost my entire savings in my bank account.

But of course, I am not that most stupidest, ill-informed and ignorant as some of your might have swiftly believed. I repudiated instantaneously because that is phishing. If I have been caught unaware, unsuspicious and careless, and did what I described earlier, I can kiss goodbye to all of my $$$ savings. And if you remember all the term & agreement that you could not care less to read and clicked "I agree" for the sake of using the internet banking... well that is the "release form", boys and girls. If anything like this case did occur. Sorry. It's your lost! Not the bank. Almost. More to that later.

Phishing is an act of fraud by posing as a legitimate website in order to steal your loggin particulars ie internet banking loggins, credit cards etc. I am the fortunate one to have sufficient online securities, but not all security in the world could protect you if you are being ignorant to the threat. It is like saying "cute" to a rabid dog. I smelt the rat 10 miles away, but lets pretend if I failed to do so. Let's imagine if I click on the link....

It will bring me to a page of the above. The URL (those who doesn't know what is URL... the red circled one) is surpringly not ANZ.COM??!! It is something dodgy. If I was alert enough, even without any online security feature, I will sense an imminent security threat and exit that page.

Now here is the other important thing and my next point, online security. If I am unawared, still a dopey like a donkey on a carrot, the online security kicked in. Every current version Firefox browser & Internet Explorer 7.0 comes with Anti Phishing feature... just like the above and below (for Internet Exporer 7.0). I strongly recommend Firefox... because it kick-arse!!!

So you may ask, "what I am ill-informed and don't have any online security".. Well it depends: If I like you - my answer is "Get original Window" or "Use Firefox instead of internet explorer (if you don't know if yours original window or not) and "Install online security program" like anonymizer.  If I don't like you... well start to get use to queuing in the bank just like the good old days.

Remember, Phishing is just ONE way you could easily lose all of your money in the bank. Many banks has stepped up to increase the security to minimise these frauds.  Bare in mind, the more the banks increase their feature , the cleaner their hands are - for there is any dispute. So far I recommend HSBC, the only bank I find with not only the usual PIN, but each account user is supplied with unique key chain device that produces different unique numbers each time I pressed it. I will need it to on every transaction, transfers and even logging in.

Next time, maybe you will hesitate to throw away the newspaper IT section. It's good for ya.

Peace.