Phishing Pharming and Spam What are they and
- Slides: 7
Phishing, Pharming, and Spam What are they and how can you protect yourself from them?
Phishing “The act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. ” http: //www. webopedia. com/TERM/p/phishing. html
Phishing Example Here the user is sent an email that appears to be from a bank. The website looks legitimate (see 1) but it is really masked to take you to website 2 and steal your financial information. http: //www. microsoft. com/athome/security/email/phishing. mspx
Pharming “Pharming seeks to obtain person or private (usually financial) information by redirecting a user to a fake web site that impersonates a legitimate web site. Even if the user correctly enters a URL (web address) into a browser's address bar, the attacker can still redirect the user to a scam web site. ” http: //www. pharming. org/index. jsp http: //www. webopedia. com/TERM/P/pharming. html
How Pharming Differs from Phishing ¢ ¢ ¢ Pharming makes use of the DNS (Domain Name Servers). Scammers can either change the DNS record or take down the DNS system all together. Unlike phishing, a user can enter the URL correctly and once on the site the user is redirected to a scam site. It will appear like the user is still at the correct URL. Pharming allows scammers to target large groups of people at one time rather than scamming one person at a time by e-mail. http: //reviews. cnet. com/4520 -3513_7 -5670780 -1. html
Spam Unsolicited junk mail, and those annoying advertisements that pop up on the internet. “Approximately half of all e-mail is bulk unsolicited email aka spam. AOL’s 35 million customers receive 2 billion spam messages a day. ” Long and Long Complete Computers. Chapter 7. p. 281.
How to Protect Yourself from Phishing, Pharming and Spam ¢ ¢ ¢ Buy or download anti-spam, phishing or pharming ware such as Mc. Afee, companies suggested on the Microsoft website, or other such companies that provide those services. If you receive an e-mail asking for personal information, do not give it. Make sure that you are on a secure site when giving out financial or private information.
