AlanBarber.Org
Sunday, May 15, 2005
Watch out for those phishing emails!
I shouldn’t have to say it but since I’ve been getting many of these fake emails lately I figured It wouldn’t hurt to post a reminder.
Watch out for phony emails asking for user account or credit card info! The technique is called phishing. Phishing attacks are called that because the senders are “fishing” for people’s personal information. Common attacks target users of online banks, Paypal and eBay. The email will claim there is a problem and your account will be closed or whatnot if you don’t correct the problem. They nicely provide a link in the email message to the login page. Here’s the problem. That link, while it may seem to be a valid url to the company’s site, actually points to a fake webpage crafted to look legit.
Let me give an example that I actually received today!
quote:
Dear eBay member,
We at eBay are sorry to inform you that we are having problems with
The billing information of your account. We would appreciate it if you
Would visit our eBay Billing Center and fill out the proper
Information that we are needing to keep you as an eBay member.
If you don’t comply until the June 2005, your eBay membership may be suspended.Sign in Here https://signin.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll
As outlined in our User Agreement, eBay will periodically send you
Information about site changes and enhancements. Visit our Privacy
Policy and User Agreement if you have any questions.Thank you!
Sure sounds and looks legit doesn’t it! However, I’m not a moron and I know it’s fake. Here are the 3 things that show it’s a fake. Now these aren’t easy to spot so you have be a bit knowledgeable of these things.
1) The message was sent to an email account that isn’t in any way associated with my eBay account! Now if you only have one email account you won’t be able to catch this flaw but for people with multiple email accounts it will be. I know I registered my ebay account with account@this_domain.com but this message showed up in the inbox of account@some_other_domain.com.
2) The to address doesn’t match. The message arrived in the inbox of account@some_other_domain.com but in the header the to address is set to some hotmail.com user. Again, this should be a rather duh moment for people yet so many would never notice this. Why would this message show up in my inbox but be addressed to some random hotmail user? Probably because someone is using a spamming program that just spits out random too addresses when it sends out messages.
3) The link to the login page doesn’t go to an eBay url! Oh, sure it looks pretty legit when you see the page but it’s actually a different website. I won’t post the actual url/ip but suffice to say when you visit the page you are NOT anywhere close to an eBay server.
So what can you do to protect yourself? The easiest answer is this. Any time you get an email message from your bank, eBay, Paypal, etc that asks you to click on a link to log in because your account is going to be cancelled or whatever, DON’T CLICK THE LINK! Instead, open up your browser, type in your banks url manual and log in. That means clicking on the url bar at the top and typing each letter of H T T P : / / W W W . E B A Y . C O M and pressing the enter key. Phishing relies on one simple fact. Users are lazy and will follow the path of least resistance. That means just clicking a link and following it blindly.
Take the time and log in securely and keep your accounts safe everyone!
on 05/15/2005 at 03:36 PM
Computers & Technology • General • Tips & Tricks • (0) Comments • Permalink