Anti-phishing.info

Anti-phishing.info is information about the internet scam known as "phishing"! Detect phishing attacks, how to prevent and avoid being scammed, how to react when you suspect or reveal a phishing attack and what you can do to help stop phishers. By following simple steps you can greatly reduce your risk of being phished!

Phishing is a type of internet spoofing scam or hoax, which has exploded on the net lately. Gartner Inc. estimate that 57 million Americans have received phish attack emails only in the five first months of 2004. Of these 3 – 5% were successful, although successrates of up to 20% has been seen towards targeted users. The potential for income is continuously attracting spammers, programmers and earlier sophisticated virus developers, making the scams progressivly worse to see through.

Imagine your self coming home from summer vacation, from abroad maybe? You might have used your VISA or MASTERCARD on several occasions. The following day you receive a mail from your personal bank claiming suspicious withdrawal from your banking account resulting in a suspension of the bank account for security reasons.

To reopen the account you are told by a phisher to follow a reactivating procedure which among other things includes giving out your personal banking account information to a online registration form on the banks website. Everything will look real! The banks URL in the address field of your browser will show the banks address, the logos on the web site will look authentic and the language will seem appropriate official and often intimidating to make you act immediately. Following the instructions, however, may make you a victim of internet phish fraud.

The phish industry has only just begun to develop. The safety company MessageLabs received 14 different phishing emails in 2003, while their phishing stat / stats in 2004 registered 290 016 attempts. With continued increase, this will become a ordinary problem on the internet in the future to come!