Anti-Phishing Sites Help You Identify Suspicious Emails

In my previous article, "How to Identify a Phishing Scam", I gave an example of one type of phishing email that I had received. There are many others that pretend to be from such companies as eBay, MSN, Paypal, VISA, Citibank, and many more.

QUICK DEFINITION OF PHISHING - "Phishing" comes from password harvesting fishing, which is the illegal practice of attempting to get sensitive information such as passwords and bank account numbers from victims by pretending to be a trusted legitimate source. They mimic trusted companies and manage to trick approximately 5% of their victims into giving them personal information.

If you receive an email that looks suspicious to you, there are some great web sites that list current phishing scams. All you need to do is compare your email and see if it is on their list.

The first resource is the Anti-Phishing Working Group. They maintain a large archive of current phishing scams listed by date. Clicking on the name of the scam produces a very detailed breakdown of the email. Click here to see my example of the Washington Mutual email.

The second resource is Millersmiles.co.uk (yes, it's a very odd name) which is self-described as "the web's dedicated anti-phishing service". It similarly lists the most recent scams in order of date. Clicking on the name also lists some information about the scam, however it is typically not as detailed as the Anti-Phishing Working Group's as you can see in the Washington Mutual example.

Both sites are good resources for discovering if a recent email is a phishing scam. As well, they both give good information on what to do if you've accidentally given out personal information. The best thing to do is react quickly to minimize the damage by contacting the police as well as your bank, credit card company, etc.