BEWARE OF BEING PHISHIED

Increasingly popular and easy way of capturing personal details and data isn't really new, instead it is a type of scam that has been around for years. This is what is known as phishing.

Phishing also known as Carding or Brand Proofing uses e-mail messages that probably come from legitimate businesses that might have dealings with banks such as Citibank, online organizations such as eBay, internet service providers such as yahoo, Earthline and insurance agencies.

Scammers ask for verification of certain information such as account no. and passwords, mainly for auditing purposes. Since these e-mails look so official, majority of unsuspecting recipients may respond to them resulting in financial losses.

One should know that around 6.1 billion phishing e-mails are send worldwide every month and $1200 is the average loss to each person successfully phished.

People behind phishing e-mails are scam artists. They literally send out millions of these scam e-mails in hope that even a few of recipients will act on them and will provide their personal and financial details. Anyone with an e-mail id can be phished.

While receiving any mail, one should first see:

*If you receive request to update your bank information by verifying your password one's again call the organization and ask if it's legitimate or check it's legitimate site.

*Look for misspellings and bad grammar. Although, any typing error can be done by any organization, still more than one is a tip-off beware.

*Remember the goal of sender is for you to disclose personal and account related information.

*Golden rule to avoid being phished is to never ever click the links within the text of e-mails. Always delete the e-mail immediately.