PHISHING

The introduction of new technology has advanced development to higher levels. One such greater tool is the introduction of internet to the world. Today information is being passed from one corner of the world to the other within seconds. It doesn’t matter where you are sending your information from provided there is an internet connection; the message will reach your destination within seconds just by a few clicks on your PC. Despite such advancements in technology there are however, some people who take advantage of the vulnerability of the internet to siphon innocent people of their valuables. One way of doing it is through Phishing. The term Phishing as described by Microsoft is a practice of luring a person into disclosing their personal information such as bank account numbers and passwords.

Phishing messages contain bogus links that lead you to unlawful or other unintended sites. Such sites will try to lure you into disclosing your personal and other valuable information by offering bogus lucrative business deals. The information collected by these unscrupulous people is used or sold to other criminals who rob you of your money and other personal information.

It is advisable not to respond to these requests directly from your email unless you hundred percent trust the site. The best way to respond to such emails is to use a different means of communication which you normally use with your bank. Responding through your email only confirms that your email address exists and you are inviting more bombardment from them. Try also to avoid clicking the links in your email or you can copy such links by opening another window in your browser. But why should you respond to an email whose origin is not known? What do you lose if you don’t respond to such communication? Nothing!

Email Clients such as Microsoft Outlook will check your messages whether or not they contain suspicious links or were sent by using bogus links or address. By using this feature or technology, the message that is detected to have contained suspicious links, is sent to Junk-Email Folder. The links in the message are ignored, disabled or blocked. Unless otherwise specified, Outlook will not automatically download pictures from such links.

Your personal information is something that should be jealously guarded by no one else but you. You are the only person responsible to guard and protect your inbox from the flood of unwanted burglary of information. Always be alert and never click on links whose sites you don’t know or trust. Your privacy depends largely on guarding your inbox from any threat from outside.