Phishing: It's You That Gets Caught

Knowing
Your
Computer

Phishing is not Fishing

Phishing is not a cute way teenagers talk about a favorite recreational activity enjoyed by people all over the world. Phishing is a scam designed to steal your identity and financial information. The bad guys are fishing for your information. It's been going on for a long time. Why? Because people keep giving them what they want.

You Won the British International Lottery!

I won it, too! I wonder how many people won it.

NOTIFICATION OF WINNING

We are pleased to inform you of the announcement BRITISH INTERNATIONAL LOTTERY DRAWS held on Wednesday September 20,2006 . Your email address attached to ticket number 564-75600545-188 drew the winning numbers 3-13-15-24-35-42-17, batch number 12/25/0304 and consequently won the lottery in the 2nd category.

You have therefore been approved of a sum pay out of £225,000GBP (Two hundred and twenty five thousand Great British Pounds Sterling ) in credited to file LOTTERY REF NO.BTL/491OXI/04.This is from total prize money of (350,000,000.00 GBP) shared among the twentyeight international winners in categories C with serial number: 5388/02. All participants were selected through a computer ballot system drawn form 25,000 company email addresses and 30,000,000 individual email addresses from Australia, Africa, New Zealand, America, Europe, North America and Asia as part of International Promotions Program, which is conducted annually.

Read that carefully. Does that sound like someone familiar with the English language? The typos and misspellings are directly from (or, form as they said) their letter. But, alas, all is not well in Whoville.

Due to the mix up of some numbers and names, we ask that you keep this award strictly from public notice until your claim has been processed and your money remitted to your account. This is part of our security protocol to avoid double claiming or unscrupulous acts by participants of this program. This lottery program was promoted by our group of philanthropist here in England. We hope with a part of your prize, you Will participate in our end of year high stakes POUNDS 10,000,000 million International Lottery.

They are going to protect you from unscrupulous acts by participants of this program.

Please be aware that your Paying Authority will Effect Payment Swiftly upon satisfactory Report, verifications and validation provided by our processing Agent; that would be designated to your file. For due processing and remittance of your winning prize to your designated account of your choice... NOTE: In order to avoid unnecessary delays and complications, you are to contact MR. JAMES WATSON. with followings details below:

1. Your full names, telephone, contact address and

2. quote your reference/batch numbers in any correspondences with us or our designated agent. Furthermore, should there be any change of your address, do inform your claims agent as soon as possible. Congratulations once again from our team of staff of our promotional Program.

Somebody has changed your PayPal account.

Dear valued PayPal member,

The security questions and answers for your PayPal account were changed on September , 2006. If you did not authorize this change,please contact us immediately using this link : https://www.paypal-us.com/ws-23/contact-us

This email included that link as one you would click to immediately go to the site to provide information. The actual link embedded inside that clickable link went to the following address:

http://home-service.haier-broadtech.com/manual/mod/mod_python/developer//webscr.html

However, You will need to update some of your records in our Resolution center if not will result account suspension. Please update your records on September .

For more information on protecting yourself from fraud, please review the Security Tips in our Security Center.

Please do not reply to this email. This mailbox is not monitored and you will not receive a response.

For assistance, log in to your PayPal account and click the Help link located in the top right corner of any PayPal page.

Thank you for using PayPal! ,

The PayPal Team

Guess what! There really was a policy change at PayPal in September, 2006 -- but it had nothing to do with account security questions and answers. You see, these guys try to make their illegal fraud as close to the truth as believable.

What You Should Do

Of course, never respond to emails like this.

For PayPal phishing emails, you should report them in the Security Center at PayPal's web site. There is a link to the Security Center at the bottom of the first page. Once there, you can click on a link to report a phishing scam.

Notify the United States Federal Trade Commission (FTC) by forwarding the suspicious email to SPAM@UCE.GOV

Did that suspicious email contain a cookie that might have downloaded spyware onto your computer? You don't know, do you? I don't, either. Please read Computer Cookies.