life in the information age: education

Criminal phishing for personal information online is a booming business today. There are thousands of fake websites up and running right now, which are good for nothing more than collecting your private information for criminal purposes. In fact, most legitimate companies who typically collect personal information from customers have at least one fake site out there impersonating them.

URL
Many phishing sites take advantage of common misspellings of a company name, fooling many people into putting in personal information without realizing they are at the wrong site. Often, the website will look exactly like the real site.

LINKS ON A PAGE
Some phishing sites will have links in the exact places links are placed on the real company’s website, but if you mouse over them you will find they are not links at all. Or, the links may open but lead to blank pages. Many phishing sites are not complete replicas. They only have enough information to fool you from the first page so you input your password.

DOES THE PAGE LOOK FAKE
some websites are so easy to spot, this is for the main fact that the websites just look fake. this can be from having a logo that looks abit shoddy, to there being a load of ads on the screen, these are all things to look out for when looking for fake websites. another thing to look for is if the websites look really plain and like the website has been designed by someone that doesnt seem to have the time to make a good website. If a company have a lot of money and are a legit company then their website will look great as they have probably paid a lot of money for their company to go on the internet and they want their website looking its best when people want to go onto it.

SECURE
a way to check whether a website is secure is by looking in the top left corner of your screen at the search box. if a website has 'HTTP' this means that the website is not totally secure and if people want to see what you are doing they probably could. 'HTTPS' means that the website is totally secure and that noone can possible see what you are looking at.