Phishing Scams are a form of social engineering assault in the field of the computer security with malicious intention of the scammer. Phishing can begin with a wicked user who sends out millions of fraudulent email messages that either appears having come from popular web sites or from site of trust like Banks, Online Retailers or Credit Card companies. Such spoofed email messages and web sites from the phisher appear official enough and people to often respond to the requests made.

How it Works

The most widespread gambit in phish activity is to carbon copy the Web page code from a major site - such as Citibank- and setup a replica page that seems to be part of the company's site. A bogus e-mail is sent out with a link to this page, which say notifies the recipient that their account has been de-activated due to problem and solicits the user's credit card data or password to re-activate the account. Believing that these emails are genuine unsuspecting people reveal their sensitive, secret and secured information like credit card numbers, passwords, bank accounts information, SSN or any other personal information to the phisher who in turn starts conning the victims using such captured information.

This phenomena and such alarming stats is shattering the consumer trust in e-commerce which will only mean less likelihood of online shopping because of threat of phishing activities. As stated by Gartner, the biggest issue to corporation is that phishing spoils the integrity of e-mail communications, so they can't count on this channel with customers. The U.S. Secret Service calls these online fraud and identity theft scams as "The bank robbery of future".

Go to Anti-Phishing.info The recommended source for phishing information and how to avoid this online scam.