Hackers Use Phishing To Trick You

Added: 11/01/2007

Hackers use phishing as a fraudulent way to acquire your personal information. Some things that they would try to get are your user name and password for online sites as well as your credit card information. Most of the time they can trick you into giving them your information by masquerading as a trustworthy site. This is bad for users of the internet because we need to be very careful who we give our online passwords to. So as users of the internet, we always have to be on the look out for scam artist.

Hackers use phishing as a fraudulent way to acquire your personal information. People who use phishing to trick you into giving them information is a growing problem online. Hackers that normally do this, are looking for ways to get your online login information for different sites. Usually these sites are online money sites like PayPal or online bank account information. When hackers get into these types of accounts they can have all your money taken out of your account and transfer it to another one. Then they will usually change your online password you use to login to these accounts so that you can not get back on. This is bad because it will usually take you a long time to get your account back, if ever. By this time they are long gone with your money. So you may be asking how these hackers use phishing to take out information? Most of the time they pretend to be a site that they are not. For example, they may send you an email that looks like one your bank would send you. In this email they may tell you that there was a problem with your account and they will need your user name and password to fix it. You not thinking anything about it, will send them this information thinking that you are sending it to your bank. As you can see, people who use phishing to take your information are pretty smart.

Hackers that use phishing to take your information has been on the raise lately. The most resent people to use phishing to take your information where doing it dressed up as PayPal. The hackers would send you an email saying that they need you to confirm your password to your PayPal account. Most people fell for it, because it looked just like the emails that PayPal sends out. After that, they would log in as you and change your password, and from there they were able to do what ever they wanted with your online money. This turned out to be a great scam for people who use phishing because most PayPal accounts are connected with your online bank account. Thus the hackers not only got your online money, but they got the account number to your bank. PayPal sent out a letter a few days later (the real PayPal) reminding everyone that no one from PayPal will ever ask for your information, so do not give it out. For many this was to little to late, many had already lost lots of money.

That was a lesson learned the hard way for many people. This just let us know, that hackers still use phishing as a way to take your information. For course, you do not see this happen just with online money sites. Many kids will use this method as a way to steal online accounts for video games. I know that sound mean (and it is) but kids get very into playing video games. Of course, this is not as bad as people taking your money, but many people put money into online games so this is a crime as well. If you think you may be a victim of people who use phishing, then you should contact the site that you gave your information away too, right away. Maybe if you do it fast, it will not be too late. Just remember not to give away your online information to anyone, and you will be safe.

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