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Phishing, Pharming, and Spam. What are they and how can you protect yourself from them?. Phishing.
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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 e-mail 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 e-mail 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 McAfee, 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.