MORE ON PHISHING

Good morning bloggers

A while ago I did an article on Phishing and the consequences thereof, both in the business sense and also in the personal sense!

Most of the banks have a whole spiel on the dangers of phishing, on their front page, as you go into the internet banking section, yet we are still unendated with messages from banks telling us to update our data online! Whatever you do -DON'T!

As a direct result of that post, I received a mail from Tonya Shtarkman, who is a student, but who also works for an American Company who is offering us all, free of charge, a solution to this problem (and ultimately a consequence for the people who send this rubbish out). I chatted to her boss Dave, via SKYPE (don't you just love technology) and here is an article, penned by Tonya, on exacty what to do when you get these messages.

I'm off to trawl my deleted box to find all the ones I have stored there so that I can put them on the site.

Have a great day.

Have you ever received a suspicious e-mail from a bank demanding that you confirm your personal information or risk having your account suspended? You were seconds from clicking on the provided link and then you realize: “Wait, I don’t bank with Wells Fargo Bank”. At that point, you detect that this is not a legitimate e-mail, throw it into your trash folder, and forget the whole thing happened. But what if you did bank with Wells Fargo? Would you hand over the goods?

These types of e-mails are not only fishy; they are actually called “phishes” and can seriously hurt you and your business if you fall victim to one. Bad guys create these phishing scams to gain access to your account, take your personal information, and even steal your funds.

So what happens when you simply throw that e-mail away? Your coworker, friend and neighbor all fall for the very same scam. This is why OpenDNS created PhishTank.com, a site that gives you the opportunity to submit phishes and block them for others.

PhishTank.com is a community-operated Web site powered by OpenDNS, the award-winning DNS service that makes the Internet safer, faster, smarter and more reliable. PhishTank gives Internet users like you the power to submit suspected phishes, which are then inspected and voted on by other Internet users. Unlike other services that have only a handful of people reviewing suspected phishing sites, OpenDNS’s PhishTank has tens of thousands of Internet users voting on them 24/7. This way, phishes are submitted, verified, and blocked within less than a day of their creation!

PhishTank also has by far the most accurate phishing data on the Internet. This is because of its sophisticated voting system: the more a user votes and the more accurate their votes are, the more weight their votes carry. This process also helps phishes get identified and blocked faster.

PhishTank’s continually-growing list of phishes is used by OpenDNS to protect its users from harmful phishing scams. OpenDNS also offers other useful tools such as Web-content filtering, shortcuts, typo correction, and network statistics. The service even makes you Internet faster and more reliable, operating at 100 percent up-time. Oh, and did I mention that it’s free?

Setting up OpenDNS is one of the best things you can do to keep your business running smoothly. So, why aren’t you using it yet? Visit OpenDNS.com and set it up today.

Tonya Shtarkman
PR Intern
OpenDNS.com