Important security warning!

From Brenda Rossini

With the holiday online shopping season, the opportunity for phishing schemes is ripe, and there are plenty of people just waiting to steal your information .... if you're not careful. We are seeing the phishing email schemes proliferating quickly.

What is phishing? In a nutshell, it is a way for criminals to trick you into revealing your online user name and password information by making an email look just like the real thing, and getting you to click on their links. Some examples we've seen include:

• Fake email from Amazon reminding you to track a package, and giving you a tracking number
• Fake email from PayPal, informing you that you just made a large payment (which you know you have not made)
• Fake email from eBay reminding you to make a payment for a purchase (which you have not made)
  

Always the "give away" is that the links given in the email don't go to the service being spoofed. Usually you may be more careful, but during the holidays if you do a lot of shopping online like I do, you may briefly panic and follow one of the links without thinking about it. And, you may even end up at a site that looks just like the real thing. Then, the trap is set ... if you enter your user name and password, the criminal has your information.

And, they are good at it. Usually the phishing email looks just like the real thing: The appearance, wording, logo, link text, everything. If you compare the real thing side by side with a phishing email, you can't tell the difference aside from the fact that the links don't go to the right place.

So, how do you protect yourself? The solution is simple. First, ALWAYS go to the website for any online shopping service before checking account status or purchases by typing the URL directly into your browser (i.e. paypal.com, amazon.com, etc.). That way you KNOW that you are on the right website. Don't be tricked into following suspicious links, or responding to purchasing notices by clicking a link in an email.

Happy Shopping!

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Brenda Rossini http://www.rossini.com