What to do if you are the victim of a phishing attack...

Ok, so most people are savvy enough not to fall for this type of phishing attack (taken from my own junk email account) –

"Dear PayPal Costumer,

It has come to our attention that your PayPal^®account information needs to be updated as part of our continuing commitment to protect your account and to reduce the instance of fraud on our website. If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records you will not run into any future problems with the online service.

However, failure to update your records will result in account suspension. Please update your records before August 15, 2011

Once you have updated your account records, your PayPal^®account activity will not be interrupted and will continue as normal.

Click here to update your PayPal account information"

However, these scams are still on the increase, as are the number of victims.  It is estimated that 1 in 4 adults in the UK will be a victim of identity theft at some point. These phishing attempts differ in intent, with ID theft for financial gain (such as taking out loans in another persons name), illegal intent such as producing fake passports, hacking, keystroke logging to steal passwords, or for laying Trojans and malware, being just a few.  These criminals are clever, often disguising the fakes very well, a recent case we heard of was an email link to a website made to look like a job search site, sadly the person who received it was job hunting and in their eagerness gave away some personal information before they realised what had happened.

Here is some advice we gave to that victim;-

·         Here is a link to the leading UK Identity Theft website, which is run by the Home Office. It contains statistics and general information, as well as advice for victims of cyber crime.  You may find the information here helpful. http://www.identitytheft.org.uk/faqs.asp

·         You can report the details of the fake site here http://www.actionfraud.org.uk/ 

·          In addition to this it may be prudent to make a report to the local Police, in case you become a victim of identity theft or fraud.

·         Change all your passwords for online accounts in case there is a risk of “keystroke logging”, basically this is where a Trojan is left on your PC which monitors and records particular key patterns, they are designed to pick up repeated codes such as passwords, and pin numbers for online banking.

·         Notify any relevant official departments of information which may have been stolen, eg DVLA, Passport Office etc.

·         Notify one of the Credit Agencies (Experian or Equifax) to log a “Fraud report” against your name. This will help prevent any difficulties in the future. You only need to contact one as they will share the information with the others.

·         Ensure you monitor any accounts you use, including social networking sites, for any unusual activity.

·         Always check the URL of a website to see if it looks genuine.

·          Use strong passwords which are changed frequently.

·         Install good anti phishing and spam filters on your PC to help prevent future incidents.

·         There is some very useful information on http://www.chatdanger.com/email/spam.aspx addressing online protection for young people.

Some of this advice may seem obvious. I feel however, if it was that obvious the number of victims wouldn’t be on the increase. Please be cautious...

Here is an excellent resource for anyone wishing to keep abreast of new phishing or online security risks http://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/.  To quote Hill Street Blues – “Hey, let's be careful out there”...