Phishing: How to keep yourself safe online | Techdigg.info

A few years ago, many Bangaloreans had the misfortune of paying their taxes at a fake website of the corporation. That's because they had typed out the wrong web address. There was another instance of many Paypal userskeying in their passwords on to a fraudulent website.

That happened because they accessed the Paypal site via a link that was malicious. Websites of financial institutions and ecommerce companies are most prone to have fake addresses. So too, email websites and social networking sites. The wrong websites that bear
close resemblance to the true ones are called phishing sites. In spite of periodic warnings, many people fall prey to pranksters.

A few precautions will ensure you are safe. One, never try to access banking, e-commerce, email or social networking sites via a link. Find out the right web address and key it in manually instead of even doing a Google search and blindly clicking on the link that shows up right on top.

Two, websites of most organisations that deal in financial transactions have an 'https' instead of the normal 'http' . Also do a due diligence on the website pages. For example, look for authentic and credible information; or for some inconsistencies or factual errors. Fraudulent sites are unlikely to be comprehensive ones and usually have some bloomers in them.

Three, if you are not on your personal device, like if you are at a cybercafe, or if you think the computer is not adequately protected, type out the password on the virtual keyboard, if the site has one. That's a genuine look-alike of the keyboard on the screen and you will have to use the mouse to click on the letter, numbers and symbols of the password. Many banks like HDFC Bank and SBI offer this alternative. This guards against viruses from tracking your strokes on the actual keyboard.

Four, go in for or enable website verification option. For example, on Yahoo Mail you can create a "Sign-in Seal", with text and image. On HDFC Bank you can have "Secure Access Image and Message".

Here, you create a secret image and text for the genuine site. So, everytime you go to the right site, you can verify its genuineness by confirming the image and the text you had created. And keep changing them periodically like the password.

And finally, enable the option of locking the website to the device, like Facebook has. Go to Account Settings, then under Security Settings, enable Login Notifications.

Every time you log in from a new device, after you key in the password, you will be asked to name the device, and you get an email alert or text message that the account has been accessed.