Identity Theft In The United Kingdom – Phishing, Pharming and Other Phearphul Phakes
One of the most dangerous and common methods of identity theft in the United Kingdom and elsewhere today is phishing. Spelled in true hacker fashion, phishing means, well, fishing, by baiting people to divulge their personal information. This method of computer ID theft uses two kinds of bait.
The first type of bait is an email that asks you to give your personal data (e.g., credit card number, password, etc.) in an email reply.
The second kind of bait is a spoofed website, which appears to be an exact replica of a trusted site. You will be sent an email asking you to click on a link which appears to go to the website of a legitimate company you know or transact business with. The email will tell you that you need to visit this website to confirm your account information.
If the fake website truly appears like your bank website and you innocently type in your bank account number and PIN or password, you become a victim of computer identity theft. The phisher can now use your entries to clean out your bank account and/or commit fraud.
In the past, incidents of phishing usually involved banks. But lately, identity thieves have expanded their activities to include insurance firms, sites like eBay and even hotels!
Computer identity theft targeted at a specific group, such as an organization or credit union, is known as “spear phishing”.
More recently, computer identity theft doesn’t even need bait to succeed. When identity thieves phish without any bait it’s called pharming. This type of ID theft is more sophisticated as it involves planting malicious code in your PC or server. This malicious code will misdirect you to bogus websites whenever you try to reach your usual financial services website.
One of the most sophisticated ways that pharmers plant this code is by sending out email – which can victimize you even if you don’t open an attachment or click on anything at all! When you simply open the pharmer’s email, a virus or trojan automatically installs itself in your PC. When you try to visit a legitimate website, the trojan will redirect you to the pharmer’s spoofed website. When you enter your personal data, the bogus site harvests it. Because of this, you should always check that the website’s address appears correctly in your browser when you arrive at the site, before typing in your login details.
But there is an even more sophisticated way by which pharmers can steal your personal information – and it doesn’t even need email! In this most advanced type of computer ID theft, the pharmer uses a trojan password stealer, which attacks via Microsoft Messenger where viruses are run. Called key loggers, these viruses monitor your keystrokes on the sites you visit, steal your passwords, and leave you vulnerable to criminals who can use your passwords for illegal transactions.
Often, being aware of these dangers is enough to protect you. But you should also have good anti-virus protection that is regularly updated to help you in the fight against identity theft in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.
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