Phishing anyone?
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There’s some guys at Indiana University doing anti-phishing research, apparently trying to find out what it is that convinces people to respond to phishing attempts and give some information to the “phisher”.
Thing is, I don’t really see the point of that. Yeah, understanding the psychology etc etc is probably useful, but I can’t help thinking that the BEST defense against phishing is education. Teaching people some really simple things like these:
NEVER click on a link in an email unless you’re CERTAIN of who sent it. For example, Ebay, Paypal and most other online companies will never ask you for your password or login information in an email. They’re not going to ask you to click on a link in an email to login either, instead they’ll notify you of anything you need to know when you login to their site. Be safe, type the url yourself or use a bookmark that YOU created after typing the url yourself.
If you get notification that you’ve won a contest / sweepstakes / lottery / whatever that you didn’t enter, hit the “junk” button. You cannot win if you did not enter. No exceptions.
If you get email saying great granduncle soandso thrice removed was super rich and you’ve inherited his estate & all you need to do is come up with some front money to process this or that, either hit the “Junk” button or check it out with family members to see if he even existed in the first place and THEN hit the “junk” button.
Beyond that, remeber the old adage: If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
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Technorati Tags: phishing, anti+phishing, research, education
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