Pretty self-explanatory, I'm in need for some good anti-phising app so my next credit card bill wont include every plasma TV available at Walmart:-( Any advice guys? I already have a router with anti-phising, but you know how reliable routers are. I also use firefox and Zonealarm for firewall, but I'll rather use every option available than having to be on the phone for 5 straight hours with my credit card company.
Best anti-phishing software is your brain. If you have an account somewhere, don't click links that take you to it. Type it in your URL bar. Problem solved.
I know I know, I'm not that stupid:033: Oh look! free SPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAMSPAM! my bank account number? yeah why not... Is it better than Spybot? always thought it wasnt...
Yep. Best Anti-Phishing software is definately your brain... It only takes one slight mistake, especially if your not paying close enough attention. People can get pretty crafty when they are looking for passwords or credit card info. Just always type in the site yourself as he said. Never click a link that you think is accurate. I am not trying to insult you either. I have been fooled once. :nod: Im sure a ton of us have.
That's great too. I forgot to mention it SpywareBlaster works as a wall, stopping malware and other stuff to be installed on your computer. Spybot started doing this only on the latest version. I have both on my PC and they work great together.
Most phising emails are pretty easy to spot actually. Emails from Ebay will always have your handle in the first line, "Dear so-and-so." Phishing emails usually start of with "Dear member," If you get one from a bank you don't belong to, that's usually a good sign it's fraudulent. Another one is "Unpaid item strike from blah-blah-blah" Easy to determine, if you don't have any auctions going on. As for spyware, adaware, viruses, etc. Just pony up and get Norton. It's only $40 a year and it catches most everything (although it never hurts to run adaware and spybot once in a while too.)
Thunderbird does a good job pointing weirdo emails out sometimes. Some of those phising emails can be tricky, but you can usually spot them.
Firefox 3 will now throw up a big warning page if you visit a dodgy website which you have to specifically cancel by setting an exception - far better than IE's piss-poor attempts. Also, Thunderbird throws up 'Caution: This may be an e-mail scam' if it's a bit suspicious. Both programs are just as good as anything McAfee and Symantec have released, and don't cost you extra dough. But overall, all these anti-phishing software programs can only do so much - and most offer nothing greater than Firefox than warning you for blatently obvious scams. The best solution is to never, under any circumstances, click-through an email if you know how to get there yourself. If you're really paranoid, you should always, always check the address bar before you enter sensitive data - what you're looking out for is domain names that DON'T end in a slash. For example: https://*soandso*.amazon.com/ is ok. http://*soandso*.amazon.com.ny0d.pie.com/ is not. http://*soandso*.amazon.com@141.68.26.1/ isn't either. Sometimes, however, no matter how hard you try, fraudsters can get your details, commonly through no fault of your own - so the only real solution is to check your account on a regular basis, and think about using a credit card rather than a debit card - credit cards can offer much better coverage if your details are pilfered.
Well, if you're REALLY paranoid, there are a few things you can do to protect yourself. 1) Don't use credit cards to buy things online. If you must, go out and get one of those Pre-paid Visa/Mastercard gift card things. You can usually get these in department stores in increments of $50 or $100, and the cool thing is you can add more cash onto them as needed. Thing about these is they're a temporary account that you can fill out with any kind of bogus info, so if the details do get ripped off you don't have to worry about someone stealing your identity. An added bonus, if you do start seeing spam show up that names your fake name attached to the prepaid card, then you know which companies are selling your info, and which companies to not do business with in the future. 2) Don't do business with people in shady countries. I do not sell anything or do any kind of business transaction with anyone in Africa, the Middle east, or southeast Asia. Sad fact is there are probably legit people these areas who just want to buy things, but the bad apples have ruined it for the bunch. Sorry guys. Make double sure the person you're dealing with is 100% for real before going through. 3) Use Paypal only for international transactions - there's no reason anyone who does business via Ebay or whatnot shouldn't have a Paypal account nowadays. Don't use bank transfer or personal checks from problem countries. Paypal or international money order only, if your buyer doesn't have access to these two methods, too bad. I don't even accept other forms of payment within my own country. 4) Don't volunteer info about yourself on the internet - People do stupid shit, like putting thier whole life story on a social networking site. Don't put too much about yourself, information such as your likes and dislikes, what bands you listen to, your birthday, how old you are, what city you live in, what your religion is, etc. can be used to figure our your passwords or tailor make a scam just for you. It's been known to happen.
Internet Explorer 7. Everyone is right, though - you should check for yourself. ALWAYS type in the URL yourself, only shop on sites you know you can trust that have secure shopping pages (https and/or the key symbol).
Thanks for the advice guys, althought I did know most of it, specially the URL and email part. I mean, who hasnt received a message from a deposed king of nigeria these days?:lol:;-) I never use my cards online, but mostly becos I'm afraid somebody could be on the line and catch the data on the fly. Dunno if thats still possible in wired connections (I would never do a transaction over wifi, specially with WEP which is what airsnort can decypher) but I'm scared nonetheless. Then theres spyware and trojans, the last ones are specially tricky since even the best antivirus cant detect more than 80% of all them. That and the fact that with almost 1TB of internal data it takes quite a while to scan my PC (is like watching paint dry). Anyway, what I've to do is buy a domain and some hosting, but since all these companies replaced their sales staff for an automatic form I cant call them and ask for a representative like I used to. I'll ask them if they accept paypal, looks like the best choice...
It's still a possibility, but nowadays it's a little more of a remote one, simply for the fact that there are billions of online transactions going on all over the world. There could be someone tapping in somewhere, but the chances of them sniffing your data without you being specifically targeted is remote. You have more to worry about the entity you do business with storing your credit card number and personal information and having this information stolen from them, either by being hacked for having physical hard drives stolen (something of which happened to Starbucks a few years ago, a number of laptops with thousands of employee and customer files were ripped off.) You can't really prevent this except to limit who you give your information to in the first place.
