Phishing_Examples and its prevention method (week 4)

In this information technology era, internet has provided us lots of benefit. In the same times, it also being abused or misused by other to conduct unethical or criminal activities such hackering, phishing and others. Nowadays,the threat of phishing has become quite common and tends to increase overtime and it is a threat to the internet user. Certain measurement has be conducted to overcome this problem.

Phishing is a social engineering attack which is criminally acquire sensitive information of others by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Normally, the information being acquire are usernames, account number, passwords, mother maiden name and credit card details and else. In other words, it is a technique used to gain or fool the user to disclosure their personal information for the purpose of identity theft.

There is a lot of ways phishing can be carried out such as fake e-mail or instant messaging or phone call from the phisher. No less than that, phisher even willing to create a fake legitimate website to deceive the users to disclosure their personal details to them. Normally, the fake legitimate website being targeted are PayPal, ebay and other online bank.

To combat with this phishing, there is many ways can be done such as educate and train the user awareness on phishing, better policies and procedures by legitimate company on their website, and use of spam filters which can reduce the number of phishing e-mails that reach their addressees' inboxes. Beside that, nowadays, web browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 has been provide anti-phishing measurement to the web user.