Antiphishers Anti-Phishers Anti-phishing

There are many examples of phishing and spam contents on this site. Be careful. Phishers and spammers are very creative.

Often phishing scams rely on placing links in e-mail messages, on Web sites, or in instant messages that seem to come from a service that you trust, like your bank, credit card company, or social networking site. Email users receive authentic-looking messages that instruct them to provide sensitive personal information. It's called "phishing." Phishing occurs when a consumer receives a deceptively-legitimate looking email from what appears to be a reputable company. The email asks recipients to update their credit card information or their account will be promptly terminated. Or the message offers a service to protect their credit cards from possible fraud.

If you "bite" the attractive email, you are exposed to identity theft.
Often "phishing" spam messages will use legitimate 'From:' email addresses, logos, and links to reputable businesses such as Bank of America, AOL, PayPal, Best Buy, Earthlink and eBay in the message. But the message instructs you to click on a web link that sends you to a fake website where you are asked to provide personal information to the scam artists. Such sites will ask for information such as your name, address, phone number, date of birth, Social Security number (SSN), and bank or credit card account number. Providing this kind of information can leave consumers at risk for identity theft.

Phishing can also be at different levels. My kids got some message about signing up free game points (such as neopets money), instead they lost all their game points.

You might see a phishing scam from different message delivering systems:
In e-mail messages, even if they appear to be from a coworker or someone you know.
On your social networking Web site.
On a fake Web site that accepts donations for charity.
On Web sites that spoof your familiar sites using slightly different Web addresses, hoping you won't notice.
In your instant message program.
On your cell phone or other mobile device

This website provide you with many examples of recently received phishing examples so that you can compare the one you received to those shown here.