An evil called phishing has been sticking out it’s ugly head in South Africa in the past few years. There are still South African internet users who are not aware of this particular crime. According to Sabric (the South African Banking Risk Information Centre) the number of schemes to fraudulently obtain confidential information from internet banking users has grown in the last 4 months. We hope this post is informative and that this motivates the public to be more careful when it comes to giving out their banking details.
For those of you who didn’t know, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using server authentication, it may require tremendous skill to detect that the website is fake.
Related Links:
- ‘Phishing’ expeditions on the increase – Mail & Guardian
- Phishing Threats Escalate – IT Web
- Beware of phishing email attacks
