Phishers hijack IM accounts

17 Oct 2006

Summary

Phishing scams continue to rise. The Anti-Phishing Working Group, established to fight phishing fraud, noted that people reported 26,150 phishing Web sites to the group in August 2006. (Phishing uses a sneaky form of spam that appears to come from a business you trust. The forged messages (the "bait") typically contain a link (the "hook") to an equally phony Web page that entices you to divulge financial or other personal data.) Though phishing scams are most commonly sent through e-mail, crooks are increasingly using instant messaging (IM) to distribute their spam scams. The scam looks like a friend is sending you a link in IM, but it’s actually sent as the result of a worm on your friend’s computer.

Things to think about when reading the article below

Assume that any Web site link in an online communication—whether it came through e-mail, IM, or chat, or was posted on a blog—is potentially a phishing scam. Read the article.

To learn more about how to protect yourself from phishing scams, read Chapter 14 ("Get Savvy About Financial Scams and Fraud") in Look Both Ways: Help protect your family on the Internet.