This is The World According to Buchs - Keepin’ it moving since 2003!

I wsa doing a little afternoon reading today over at Slashdot, and found an article about email “Phishing”.

Essentially, phishing is a fraud scam. The target gets an e-mail alerting them that they need to update their account information, or renew their credit card, or something. Somewhere in the message is a link to a web site that appears to be legit. However, when the victim clicks on the link, they’re taken to a web site set up by the phishers. The site looks like the real deal, but it only exists to collect the victim’s info - credit card numbers, social security numbers, passwords, etc.

For instance, last week I received an e-mail from “US Bank” alerting me that they’ve been monitoring my online banking access, and that they suspected that some unauthorized user had accessed my account. I was told to click a link to the US Bank site, where I would confirm my account information.

Of course, the web site I was taken to was bogus. Also, I don’t have a US Bank account.

So, the article I was reading had some statistics on how many people actually fall for this kind of scam. The research came from an online quiz. You’re presented with 10 e-mails; you have to read and determine whether or not it’s legitimate.

The MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test

Just for the record, I got a 10 out of 10. Momma don’t raise no dummies.