How to Protect Yourself Against Internet Phishing Scams

Have you ever given out an account number, password, or other private information in response to an email and found, too late, that you were scammed? Crooks called phishers count on your not knowing how to tell the difference between a legitimate email and a fake.

You get an email that looks as if it's from your bank, or Paypal, or maybe your credit card company, asking you to update your information, sometimes with the warning that your account is in danger of being cancelled. The email includes a link for you to click on, but instead of taking you to the real site, you land at a realistic copy. You fill in the requested information, and before long you find that your bank account has been cleaned out or that your credit card has been used to run up thousands of dollars in purchases.

PhishTank, an internet clearing house for information about phishing, reports that out of more than 12,000 suspicious emails submitted to them in 2001, almost 9,000 were scams. In the last two years, U.S. consumers lost $7 billion to email scams, and one out of every four households that has regular internet users has been a victim.

How can you tell whether an email is real or a clever phishing scam? If you don't know how to tell the difference, Anti-Phishing Phil can be your best friend and teacher. "Anti-Phishing Phil is an interactive game that teaches users how to identify phishing URLs, where to look for cues in web browsers, and how to use search engines to find legitimate sites." It was invented by Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists who found that a game is a better teaching method than tutorials or articles. An early study showed that people increased their ability to identify scam sites by 20 percent-from 67 percent accuracy before playing with Phil, to 87 percent afterwards.

The game is fun and informative. Phil is your fishy cursor, swimming among worms that are really URLs. When you click on one, you're shown a page with a log-in box. Is it really the site it pretends to be, or would it lead you right into the jaws of a scammer? Decide whether it's good food for Phil, or whether he should reject it. If you're not sure, you can ask for help. You can play the game as many times as it takes for you to learn all the signs that signal a phony site. If you leave your email address, you'll be asked to take a followup quiz a week later, to see how much you remember. Even if you think you're a savvy surfer, you might be surprised at what you learn.

If you still can't decide if it's safe to click on an email link , you can submit the URL of a suspected phisher at PhishTank and track what others say about it. OnGuard Online is a government site that's loaded with information about phishing and other internet scams, and how to protect yourself against them.