Phishing What is phishing and how can you stay safe from the phishers
A phishing email is one that tries to get you to give the sender your financial information.  The most common types that I receive are: 1)  Fake bank emails.  (If you believe the contents of my inbox almost every bank in the land has lost my details.) 2)  Requests from people whose relatives have, allegedly, left them many millions of dollars and who will give me a share in return for, guess what, my bank account details.  (I refuse to get out of bed for less than $10m) 3)  Fake Ebay emails. 4)  Lotteries that claim you have won millions of Euros.  If you didn't enter, you haven't won.  All that will happen is that the phishers will demand hundreds of Euros from you.  Let's look in more detail at 1) and 3). Look at this snapshot from my inbox just recently:   The phishers are so keen to tell me about the supposed alert that they've sent the email to 2 different email addresses. If I click on the link in the email, this is where it takes me:
And what do they want?  My User ID, of course. Now look at the website address in the address bar at the top of my web browser.  It isn't the Anglo Irish Bank at all.  Fake Ebay emails If you are an Ebay user, beware of fake Ebay and Paypal emails.  If you are in any doubt at all about their authenticity, log into your Ebay or Paypal account.  All emails sent legitimately by Ebay will be duplicated in your account area.  All transactions on Paypal will be logged in your account. Here's a fake Ebay one I received recently. How do I know it's a fake? 1) Look at the top where it confidently asserts that my registered name is included to show it originated from eBay.  That's not my registered eBay name.  It's an old email address that mainly gets used by the spammers.  2) If I point the mouse at any of the links in the email, this is what I see at the bottom of my screen NOT the address of eBay. Delete the email.