Spoofing, Phishing and Nigerian Princes
Posted Friday, February 4, 2005
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Spoofing, Phishing and Nigerian Princes
By Phil and Janet Winter
Isn’t it amazing the stuff that shows up on your computer and in your email? Just think, if you took advantage of all the offers that inundate your inbox every day, you’d have a mortgage at 1.5%, cheap drugs, and you’d have millions in your bank account from that Nigerian prince. At the least these are simply annoying.
But there’s some really malicious stuff out there, so we’re going to discuss a few of the really nasty ones.
The other day I got an email presumably from my bank, Bubba’s First National. The email looked legitimate with BFN’s logo. It wanted me to click a link to verify my account information. Warning! But it was the phrase, “…please requirement your information verify…” that gave it away. Even BFN writes better than that. This is known as “phishing.” First, no reputable organization will send such an email. If you have any doubts at all, go to the organization’s web site independently (Don’t copy – paste the URL from the email!). Next, report the phishing attack to the company being “spoofed” (our next topic). You can usually find a link on the legitimate site to report fraud.
Spoofing is setting up a site that mimics a legitimate site. How can this be done? Well, you can right-click and copy almost any image or logo you find on a web site, and with a little HTML, build a page the looks remarkably like the legitimate site. (Note, I’m NOT suggesting you do this!) What you need to do is to verify the certificate of any site on which you’re going to place sensitive information. Since I’m basically lazy, here’s the link: http://www.microsoft.com/security/incident/spoof.mspx
Everyone by now knows about spyware. Spyware is software you didn’t ask for (in most cases) running on your computer. As a red blooded American, I think that “just ain’t right!” You can find out more about spyware here: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/spywarewhat.mspx.
I recently downloaded Microsoft’s anti spyware program. It’s free and it works. Here’s the link: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/spyware/software/default.mspx. It found some nasty stuff on my computer.
Here’s a laundry list of some other things you can do.
1. Don’t run any of these pop-up ads that say they are going to enhance your computer – or anything else. Some may be legit, others certainly are not.
2. Don’t click the “unsubscribe” button on those porn sites – or any other spam email. That simply tells them there’s a warm body at your end.
3. Put your computer downstream of a modem and router. That is, set up a network. It helps mask your computer from the techno-terrorists out there.
4. If you’re running Windows XP activate the firewall. It’s free. No brainer.
Finally, I wish I could claim I thought of this but I didn’t. Radio personality Kim Komando offers a way to block annoying pop-up ads without buying or installing any software. I haven’t tried it so you’re on your own on this one. Here’s the link to her daily tip. http://www.komando.com/tips_show.asp?showID=7724. I write monthly tips, and she writes daily tips. Guess that’s why she gets the big bucks.
I have to go now. The mail carrier just went by. My check from the Nigerian prince will arrive any day now.
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