[253] warning about "phishing"

[Richard Smith <smith@sfu.ca>]

I hope everyone in this class knows what "phishing" is. If you don't,  
check out the Wikipedia entry on the topic: http://en.wikipedia.org/ 
wiki/Phishing

I am raising this today because I have received, in the last 12 hrs,  
two very clever phishing messages. One was supposedly by TD Canada  
Trust, suggesting I could win my bill payment if I logged in to my  
account (nasty because a promotion like this is running on the bank  
machines). The other was supposedly from eBay, with a message from  
someone asking (ambiguously, of course), about an item I had for  
sale. Luckily I don't have anything for sale on eBay, but you can  
imagine that someone who did might click on it without thinking.

Both of these links, of course, don't take you to a genuine site for  
your service provider or bank but in fact take you to a "fake" site  
that asks for your user id and password and then starts emptying your  
account.

No real service provider will ask you to log in via an e-mail  
message. Never click on those links in an e-mail, no matter how  
genuine they appear.

...r

--
Richard Smith, Associate Professor School of Communication
Simon Fraser University, 515 West Hastings Street, Vancouver, CANADA  
V6B 5K3
Phone: 604 291 5116 Web: http://www.sfu.ca/~smith/ Mobitus: 2001 1070  
0578 skype - callto://richard_k_smith
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