• Phishing refers to efforts to trick you into revealing your personal or financial information. This is often done by sending out millions of emails at random claiming to be from your bank or similar organizations and then requesting that you update your details, using a link provided within the email. When you click on this link you are taken to a web site that looks just like the real thing but is in fact a copy of a banks web site. When you type in your details, you have just given the information to criminals who will use that information in identity theft related crime.
• Be careful of emails claiming to be from financial institutions or popular web sites instructing you to click on a link and login. Often the link points to a clone of the legitimate web site which is under the control of criminals. Should you click on the link & log into the fake site you will have inadvertently given your password details away. Never click on a link in an email, to be safe open your web browser and type in the address for the web site, this way you can be sure that you are viewing the legitimate site. Modern web browsers such as Internet Explorer 7+ or Mozilla Firefox 2+ have anti-phishing features that will display a warning if you visit a web site that has been identified as fraudulent.