FTC Cautions E-mail Users to be Wary of Phishing Messages

According to FTC, the Federal Trade Commission, phishers are dispatching fraudulent e-mails or deceptive pop-up messages to unwitting Internet surfers so that they could be victimized in phishing attacks. Giving an instance of such phishing, FTC said that the fraudulent e-mail might be dispatched from an Internet payment facility or the victim's bank.

Typically the e-mail says that an illegal transaction is suspected to have occurred in the name of the user's financial account. However, to make sure that there is no compromise of the account, the end-user is directed to click a link within the e-mail where he could verify his identity.

But clicking the link takes the user onto a fake site that resembles a genuine company's site. The key purpose of this particular site is to get users to give out personal information, which the scam operators might steal and use to make purchases or commit other offenses in the name of the victim.

Sometimes the phishing e-mail threatens of grave consequences if the user doesn't respond.

Elucidating the phishing scams that FTC reported, Director of the Tennessee Division of Consumer Affairs, Mary Clement, stated that since such phishing scams were always changing, it was simply not possible to keep pace with the alterations. TriCities.com published this on April 2, 2009.

Clement added that one could best avoid becoming a victim if he practices safe computer operations as well as reports fake e-mails.

Hence experts suggested users not to answer pop-up messages or e-mails that request for financial and other personal information as well as to not click the given links. Also, it would be most suitable not to lift an e-mail link for inserting it into the browser, as phishers could make it appear to go to the intended destination but in reality, it takes the user onto a different website.

FTC further recommends that users who stumble on these kinds of phishing e-mails could forward or complain about them at various places. These include the Internet Crime Complaint Center and FTC, a collaboration of the National White Collar Crime Center, Bureau of Justice Assistance, and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Related article: FTC Reaches Million-Dollar Settlement For Spyware

» SPAMfighter News - 4/9/2009