Message From The Editor

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I would like to take this opportunity of wishing you all a happy and prosperous 2005.

Kind regards, Martyn Brown

www.workinghours.co.uk

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Phishing, Don't get hooked

They're Phishing with Stink-Bait: Don't Get Hooked
By Trevor Bauknight

Phishing has gotten out of control on the Internet; and
unfortunately, it has nothing to do with following a great
Vermont band around the country aboard a VW Bus.

It is a relatively new phenomenon in the world of Internet scams,
and it involves the sending of e-mail "alerts" which appear to
have originated at places like eBay, PayPal, banks and other
institutions with which you may have online accounts. These
fraudulent alerts warn you that your information needs to be
updated or verified for some reason and they include a link
which looks like a legitimate link where you might update
account information or what-have-you.

The funny thing is that when you have the status bar at the
bottom of your web browser visible and you hold your pointer
over the link, you can usually see where it will really take you
if you click it; and typically, this is a totally unrelated
domain (often only a numeric IP address shows) run by a scammer
out to collect your personal information. Many people don't
notice these details while browsing, and it has been reported
that up to 5% of the "phished" fall victim to the scam.

To tell you how difficult it can be to discern between the
legitimate and the scams, I follow this stuff for a living, and
I missed two out of ten on the MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test at
http://survey.mailfrontier.com/survey/quiztest.html (which,
incidentally, is a good place to get a look at some examples of
what the phishermen are up to and how they go about their
shameful business). I erred on the side of caution, however,
assuming that two legitimate messages were scams; and that's a
pretty good policy, in general.

Your online identity is a valuable thing, and is becoming more
valuable as more and more day-to-day activities take place on
the Web. People are paying bills online, making travel plans
online and even communicating their most private, personal
feelings online. Anyone who can steal your online identity (or,
more accurately, in this case, con you into giving it to him)
can, for all intents and purposes, *become you* in order to
carry out all kinds of nefarious activities.

Here are some easy-to-remember ways to avoid the hook:

1) Keep in mind that legitimate companies don't operate this
way. No matter how shiny the bait, no company (and certainly no
bank!) is going to use this method for this purpose. E-mail is
not a secure or 100% reliable means of communication, and they
know this. Just as Microsoft doesn't send out software patches
by e-mail, financial companies don't send out mail bearing fake
links for you to follow.

2) Keep your browser window's status bar visible...glancing
at it before you click a link will very often show you the
destination URL without you having to click and wind up in
pop-up hell or some other questionable corner of the 'Net. This
setting is usually changed somewhere under the browser's View
menu.

3) Keep a close eye on your online accounts regularly. You
should periodically check in with your eBay, PayPal and other
such accounts if for no other reason than to change the
password. If you change your password regularly, an e-mail
feverishly telling you that your account may have been
compromised will be even more obviously fake than otherwise,
and you can laugh at the pitiful scammers as you drag the
message to the Trash. Checking your accounts manually will also
give you the opportunity to see what the latest news may be
straight from the horse's mouth.

4) Whatever you do, don't send personal information via e-mail
to anyone you wouldn't trust acting as you. If you think you may
need to check the status of your eBay account, for example, don't
respond to an e-mail asking you to do so; but, rather, login
from the top-level eBay site and navigate to your account.
Scammers are adept at setting up a fake link-target to look just
like the corresponding legitimate page.

5) Keep your anti-virus and anti-spyware software up-to-date and
active. This is a good general policy that will help keep your
computer free of harmful viruses and spyware. Some phishing
e-mails include attachments meant to run automatically because
of poorly-configured e-mail software or for you to run manually
when you're convinced by the fake e-mail that you should.

6) You should configure Windows to show filename extensions at
all times so that you can see when an attachment that looks like
nice.jpg is really nice.jpg.vbs, a Visual Basic script that can
cause untold headaches. Also, make sure your e-mail software
isn't doing anything crazy with attachments like downloading
them automatically. Opening attachments you're not expecting is
generally a bad idea anyway.

If you're concerned that you may already be a victim of a
phishing scam, you should review all your online accounts for
unusual activity as well as your offline accounts with banks,
credit cards, etc. Any unusual delay in receiving statements
should raise a flag. You should also file a complaint with the
Federal Trade Commission at http://www.ftc.gov. The FTC maintains
a good source of information on e-mail and Internet scams at
http://www.ftc.gov/spam

Forward copies of phishing e-mails you receive to spam@uce.gov
with headers intact so that they can examine the source of this
garbage.

Maintaining an up-to-date computer and a vigilant attitude while
browsing will keep your Online Identity in your hands and, with
any luck, phishing will go back to being primarily something
done by nomadic hippies.

================================================================
Trevor Bauknight is a web designer and writer with over 15 years
of experience on the Internet. He specializes in the creation
and maintenance of business and personal identity online and can
be reached at trevor@tryid.com. Stop by http://www.cafeid.com
for a free tryout of the revolutionary SiteBuildingSystem and
check out our Flash-based website and IMAP e-mail hosting
solutions, complete with live support.
================================================================

We just can't resist it, can we?

Computer users across the world continue to ignore security warnings about spam e-mails and are being lured into buying goods, a report suggests.
More than a quarter have bought software through spam e-mails and 24% have bought clothes or jewellery.

As well as profiting from selling goods or services and driving advertising traffic, organised crime rings can use spam to glean personal information.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) warned that people should "stay alert".

"Many online consumers don't consider the true motives of spammers," said Mike Newton, a spokesperson for the BSA which commissioned the survey.

"By selling software that appears to be legitimate in genuine looking packaging or through sophisticated websites, spammers are hiding spyware without consumers' knowledge.

"Once the software is installed on PCs and networks, information that is given over the internet can be obtained and abused."

Brazil top

The results also showed that the proportion of people reading - or admitting to reading - and taking advantage of adult entertainment spam e-mails is low, at one in 10.

The research, which covered 6,000 people in six countries and their attitudes towards junk e-mails, revealed that Brazilians were the most likely to read spam.

A third of them read unsolicited junk e-mail and 66% buy goods or services after receiving spam.

The French were the second most likely to buy something (48%), with 44% of Britons taking advantage of products and services.

This was despite 38% of people in all countries being worried about their net security because of the amount of spam they get.

More than a third of respondents said they were concerned that spam e-mails contained viruses or programs that attempted to collect personal information.

"Both industry and the media have helped to raise awareness of the issues that surround illegitimate e-mail, helping to reduce the potential financial damage and nuisance from phishing attacks and spoof websites," said William Plante, director of corporate security and fraud protection at security firm Symantec.

"At the same time, consumers need to continue exercising caution and protect themselves from harm with a mixture of spam filters, spyware detection software and sound judgement."

Source BBC