Technofriends

There are reports about the increased spread of Phishing Scams on Twitter. Falling to these Phishing scams can let your Twitter ID and Password exposed to the phishers. These Phishing scams operate by sending you a direct message with a link. These links then re-direct you to a page which looks exactly as the Twitter login/homepage and you are prompted to enter your user id and password. This is where you need to be vigilant. 

The effect of getting taken in by this scam seems to be that affected accounts send messages to their followers with the original phishing message. To date, no other effect of falling victim to the scam has been reported. However, since many people use the same user ID and password for multiple online services, it’s possible that credentials collected from this scam could be used to log in to other services, including financial sites.

In general these are the basic steps you should be following to stay away from Phishing scams from a previous post How not to get Phished,Learn from Phil the Fish :

• Always go through the URL of the website. A closer look at the URL can certainly give you clues with regards to the fraudulent websites.

• Never reply to emails asking for your bank account number, internet user details etc. Remember NO BANK asks you for such information. If they do, CHANGE YOUR BANK.

• The old saying “When in doubt, talk”, holds true here as well. If you are in a doubt about the email/website, just take the phone and call up the call center of the service to get an explanation on your doubt.

• Forward spam that is phishing for information to spam@uce.gov and to the company, bank, or organization impersonated in the phishing email. Most organizations have information on their websites about where to report problems.

• Don’t open email attachments sent to you by strangers. Email attachments can have programs which can affect your computers once opened.

• Always follow steps to a healthy PC. You can read my previous post 4 steps to a Healthy PC to learn more on this.

• Always keep your Anti Virus Softwares, Spywares and Firewalls updated. You can use Update Checker which happens to be a free service for this. Also read my previous post Use Update Checker to Keep your Softwares UPDATED.

Via

Also check out the below embedded video from CommonCraft which talks about How Phishing Scams Work.

 

You can also follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/vaibhav1981

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