Scam artists have come up with a new way of trying to deceive people and it?s called phishing. It is designed to steal some of your most important personal data, such as credit card numbers, passwords, account data, or other information. They then use all of this information to steal your money, identity or both.

Phishing usually involves the use of fraudulent emails and copy-cat websites trying to trick you into giving them all of your personal information which is then later used to access your financial records. They potentially can access your bank accounts, securities, mortgage, or credit accounts, your social security numbers, and the login passwords you use when accessing online financial services providers.

The con artists start a phishing campaign by sending millions of fraudulent e-mail messages which look like they are coming from trustworthy websites, such as your bank or credit card company?s website. They then ask you to provide personal information. Some recent scams were found to use official-looking logos from real organizations and other identifying information taken directly from legitimate Web sites.

• Phishing scams are after your personal information. Be careful opening emails from organizations or addresses which you are not familiar with. Any email that you get from a trustworthy body such as eBay, Amazon, or perhaps your bank never ask for personal security information like your social security number or your password. Email isn?t the most secure medium for transporting sensitive information like that. There is no reason why a financial company should or would ask you those types of questions. In fact, most reputable companies state right in their privacy policy that they will never ask you to give your personal or billing information.
• If you do happen to click on a phishing email, you?ll be transported to an insecure and potentially dangerous for your computer security website. Any reputable website using security encryption will always have HTTPS protocol at the beginning of the URL. It?s a great way to immediately identify a phishing scam. If a website doesn’t have the HTTPS at the beginning of its URL, then it’s not for real no matter how legit it may look.
• Another obvious sign of a phishy website is when it has misspelled words in the URL address. If the name of the site is, such as www.gooogle.com for example, then that is a quick tip off that a phishing scam is happening.
• Anytime you are asked for any personal information over the phone then there is a pretty good chance someone is trying to scam you. One very slick phishing scam occurs when a person receives an email supposedly from your banking institution, asking you to call a “secure” number in order to confirm your account number, billing address, or other personal information but only to have the person on the other line a scammer.
• Sometimes you can tell a potential phishing email from its generic greeting. One of the easier ways in detecting phishing attempts is to always check if you’re personally identified in the email content.

Here are two of the best ways to avoid being caught in a phishing scam:

1. You need to be critical - Be extremely skeptical of any all emails sent to you asking for personal information. If your bank or other financial institution really needs to get a hold of you to verify something, they’ll send it in writing or via a secure email.
2. You need to be protected ? There are plenty of virus protection programs available for you to set up on your computer. Many of these programs set up spam filters and phishing filters to help you avoid any potential problems or issues.