I??™m sure the urgent tone of the messages
might be more disconcerting if you actually had accounts at those institutions.
Of course, those messages aren??™t from eBay or Wells Fargo; they??™re spam. But
unlike come-ons for weight loss and real estate schemes, this spam tries to
trick you into revealing personal information through a practice called phishing
(not to be confused with the musical group Phish).
Phishing messages have become such a problem that even Microsoft has
snapped into action and included a Phishing Filter with Internet Explorer 7.0.
The filter, which is enabled by default, warns you if you visit a site it suspects
to be fraudulent, and even lets you report a phishing web site so others can
be warned. (From the Tools drop-down in IE, select Phishing Filter for
options.) But for the IE??™s Phishing Filter to work, you need to have automatic
updates enabled, as described in ???The Security Center and the Firewall,??? earlier
in this chapter.
But no filter is foolproof. To avoid this trap, you need to recognize the red
flags. First, no reputable company will ever ask you to ???verify??? your information,
and while many sites ask you to log in to access your account, never do
so after following a link in an email. Instead, use a trusted bookmark or just
type the URL into your browser??™s address bar by hand. If you??™re not comfortable
simply discarding the message, contact the company and ask whether
the email is legitimate.
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