Wednesday, April 06, 2011

Beware of phishing emails

Something a little off the topic, but very important.

Last week a large email marketing services company was hacked, exposing millions of peoples email addresses. There is a good chance that one of the companies that has your email address is a client of this marketing services company. These exposed email addresses could be used to launch a phishing attack. Beware of legitimate looking emails. Read the article linked below for more information.

Millions of emails exposed in major security breach

http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/04/03/6402261-millions-of-emails-exposed-in-major-security-breach?gt1=43001

For those who do not know what Phishing is, here is a definition from the Computing Dictionary.

phishing definition

security
("brand spoofing", "carding", after "fishing") /fishing/ Sending e-mail that claims to be from some well-known organisation, e.g. a bank, to trick the recipient into revealing information for use in identity theft. The user is told to visit a web site where they are asked to enter information such as passwords, credit card details, social security or bank account numbers. The web site usually looks like it belongs to the organisation in question and may silently redirect the user to the real web site after collecting their data.

For example, a scam started in 2003 claimed that the user's eBay account would be suspended unless he updated his credit card information on a given web site.