The tactics of those who are seeking to deceive and take advantage of you while you are online are changing. It used to be the simple e-mail chain letter, much like a regular postal chain letter. Then it was the Nigerian 411 scams, claiming that you were needed to broker millions of dollars out of Nigeria, or some other obscure country. Perhaps you won the U.K. lottery?
Well, today the tactics are changing rapidly. Perhaps today you got an e-mail from eBay, or PayPal, or even your local bank, saying something was wrong with your account. How could this be? You think better, but perhaps you should check it out, right? You go to the site, and you see that you need to login using your username and password in order to verify your account. The login page looks pretty much identical to the website you think you are going to, so it must be legit, right?
Wrong! Don’t ever think that it is always ‘ok’! You need to know two things:
(1) your bank, PayPal, eBay, etc., will NEVER ask you to ‘verify’ your login and password.
(2)Secondly, ALWAYS check the address bar in the top of your browser. Does the address look correct? Is it a secure site using “https” instead of the normal “http”? These are indicators that you need to look for, and must make yourself aware of.
These new scams are called “phishing” sites (pronounced fishing), basically because they “fish” for your information. Surprising as it may seem, when they put out tens of thousands of e-mails, they actually manage to scam some people and steal their ID and various accounts, even if only temporarily. It’s enough to do damage, and can happen to anyone, anywhere. The new watchword is caveat emptor: surfer beware!