For the final night of Phish Week, I figured it would be good to sum things up by talking about some of the resources available to protect yourself from Phishing Attacks. I discussed a few methods last night, mainly ways that you can manually keep on a look out for phishing scams. So, what are a few ways that you can have software check for phishing attacks and threats for you? To start, I must say that there is no software around that will detect every phishing threat or attack. In the case of the scam I presented to you during last nights post, with the EBay sale, you would only be able to pick up on something like that with the proper knowledge of how phishers work and an eye for dishonesty.
Probably the best place to start for some very base level phishing protection is your Internet browser. With the rapid increase of phishing and phishing related incidents, both Mozilla and Microsoft, makers of Firefox and Internet Explorer respectively, have included out of the box phishing protection in the latest versions of their browsers (Firefox 2 and IE 7). This automated protection comes pre-enabled and will normally alert you if you have surfed on to a website that it has detected as being fraudulent. While this is not 100% accurate, it is a very good place to start especially if you have no other detection software. If you haven’t updated your browser to the newest version, I suggest you do it soon.
Another great place to look for phishing protection software is Symantec, unless of course you’re one of the many people out there who just doesn’t like using products with the Norton name. The Norton Internet Security Suite comes not only with many tools to protect your computer from hackers and virus’s, but it also comes with anti-phishing tools, at least in the newer versions. Symantec has also created a new product this year titled Norton Confidential which basically focuses on anti-phishing and fraud protection. If you are one of those people that do not like Norton, than check out one of the competitors Internet security packages, almost all of the bigger ones such as CA and PC-Cillin contain anti-phishing software. Personally, I would not buy a tool just to protect against phishing, but everyone is different and everyone should find their own comfort zone. If you know that you have been taken before by a phishing like scam or are just worried about such an event taking place, than this software could give you the piece of mind you are looking for.
Those are the best software based ways that I can give you for protecting yourself against phishing. If you are still frightened, which you shouldn’t be, then I guess you could always just stop using the Internet all together….but who wants to do that. If you’re smart about surfing the Internet and pay close attention to what is going on while you’re surfing you can usually stay on top of problems such as these without having to worry too much. If something seems out of place or you just don’t get a good feeling from a certain site or a certain transaction, than do a little research. Find out what you are dealing with before you create a mess for yourself. If you’d like to read more about phishing, I would suggest checking out some of the following sites. All of them contain plenty of information regarding certain phishing scams, as well as tips and advice:
The Anti-Phishing Working Group:
http://www.antiphishing.org/
Recognizing Phishing:
http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/phishing/identify.mspx
U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission:
http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/phishing.htm
Just remember folks, “Phish, it’s what’s for dinner”!
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