Id Theft Protection-Phishing’s Growing Threat
Phishing has grown into a major problem and it’s getting worse. But nowadays the computer user is deceived, most of the time without knowing it. You’ve probably seen them in your e-mails. These attempts are designed to provoke an immediate reaction. If you follow through and click on the link, odds are, you will likely compromise your personal and financial information.
A different and growing method of phishing involves rogue DNS servers. Sometimes referred as “lying DNS servers”, they target virus infected computers computers and redirect them to bogus sites that resemble actual legitimate business sites. It’s not done all the time, this might alert the user to something being wrong.
While some of these sites are easily detectable as frauds, others are very clever and more difficult to detect. The ones that are more easily detected have typos and misspellings. Sometimes the statements on the page show poor grammar. The latter sites are very hard to tell from the real thing as they look like the real site and even have the feel of the real thing.
The redirections don’t happen all the time, but happens enough so that hackers and thieves make alot of money at it. The hackers can pretty much decide when and where the user gets sent as these attacks are designed to modify the settings on victims’ computers and send traffic to rogue DNS servers.
The scam works something like this: When a user (with an infected computer) tries to go to a website, say EBAY. They get redirected to a spoof site that looks very convincing in every respect. It amy contain viruses, malicious code, or have a huge abundance of ads that profit the hacker. THe malware may be designed to look for the user’s financial data or passwords to other legitimate sites that may be stored on thier computer. Keep in mind that the hacker’s main effort is to steal identity and financial information.
The Solution
Most up to date antivirus software will detect these viruses,etc. and terminate them before they can cause any damamge. It is also a good idea to scan your system at least once a week. If you are a heavy internet user, once a day might be a good idea. Along with that, it is always good to keep your virus protection as up to date as possible. Following these simple steps can help keep your computer and personal information intact and secure.
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