by Sandra Wilson

Email phishing is a way for scammers to attempt to collect vital financial and personal information from the people to whom they are sent. This is potentially a very expensive lesson if one falls for the emails. While many are very easy to recognize, others are becoming quite sophisticated and can take even the most astute person

How email phishing is being used is to collect your private information such as personal data and financial accounts data. Once he has these, the email scammer can then use your information fraudulently. He could go straight to the financial accounts you gave him information about and steal the funds within the account. Or he could use your personal information to set up ways whereby he can still get money but end up leaving you holding the bag such as taking out a credit card in your name.

One popular phishing email is the foreigner who wants to or needs to move money out of his country to the States. Feeling sorry for his plight, the generous email receipient will allow give him the information needed to access their own bank account. To tell the truth, what often precipitates this generosity is the simple fact that greed takes over for the poor foreigner will offer to pay you from the funds transferred. You might just see a small amount of money transferred to the account but the next thing you know, all you have will be removed from your account. As long as these scams have been around, some people still fall for them.

Other phishing techniques include sending an official looking email from what one is led to believe is the bank of that individual. This email is requesting that you update the personal information on the website that they have provided a link to. When you hit the link, the website that they have listed is not the website that you goes to, although it often has the same appearance of a bank website. This type of email phishing is of a much higher level of sophistication than other types and can be harder to identify. You should be aware that many, if not all, financial institutions will never request that you update your personal information via a website.

Whether you are playing or working online, you need to keep your wits about you regarding the emails you receive. Perhaps the best thing you can do to help prevent email phishing is to report any emails that you get that look suspicious. Maybe once in awhile, you will report one that is completely legitimate. But this is a case of just better safe than sorry.

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For more notes and articles on What Is Phishing and by what means to report phishing as suggested in our article, visit http://www.antiphishingscams.com/