The act of phishing is closely related with spoof email. What phishing is can be described as impostor emailing. Basically An email comes to you and it appears to be from a reliable source such as a bank, ebay or paypal asking for personal information, but it is really a fake from a person trying to trick you which will be used to access your credit card information or other information which could be sold to other spammers or marketers.

Statistics show that over half of the email sent everyday is spam and many times this is phishing spam. What are some ways you can protect yourself against phishing? Below are some practical Tips.

• If an email asks for your personal information such as credit card or social security number to confirm something related to an account then most likely it is a phishing email. A reputable bank or company like eBay will never ask for this.

• Call your bank or the source the email came from to inquire whether it may be legitimate or not if you are unsure. Always better to be safe than sorry, possibly thousands of dollars later out of pocket.

• Make sure a site that you do trust has a secure connection when ever giving out personal information. You can recognize this by the https:// rather than just http:// before the website name in your browser bar.

• Make sure to always report any suspicious email to the reputable company or organization the email may be trying to impersonate.

• Become part of a community that looks out for phishing and sends you warnings or posts recent methods being used.

In conclusion then, phishing can take on many forms, not just email even though that is most common. It’s always good to stay in the know and take every email seriously. If you don’t recognize something many times it’s just best to just not open it or delete it.