Can YOU Spot Phishing?

Years ago, shortly after I met my husband-to-be, we had an arguament carefully reasoned discussion because he thought I was making up words. He didn't think there was such a word a phat and bet me $20 he was right. As we move into the 21st century and beyond, language is still the ever-flowing ocean of surprises it has always been with kids challenging the way their parents think about words like sick and so on. One word which caught my attention today was phishing. The ph- beginning indicates it's nothing to do with large waders and a net, although there are similarities with fishing.

Phishing usually takes place in the form of an email, sent directly to you, and designed to appeal to your better nature. For example, you may be asked to fund people in South Africa as they try to get money which is, apparently, rightfully theirs. I've recieved a phishing email two days in a row now, and I'm glad I was able to spot it each time.

The phishing emails I recieved pretended to be from PayPal. So the first thing that caught my attention was the fact that "PayPal" was sending me an email to an email address I hadn't registered with them. Then I pointed with my mouse at the links in the email. This allows me to see the address of the link in the bottom left-hand corner of my screen. I would expect any link to PayPal to read www.paypal.com. Instead I saw a few other words before the address continued with paypal.com. I didn't trust it at all, and when I went to the PayPal website to see what they recommended, I was delighted to discover that all I had to do was forward it to their spoof@paypal.com email address. And I will keep doing so for as long as this email comes in. Each time, I've recieved an email back from the real PayPal explaining what they do to fight these phishing scams that show up in their name.

Don't be taken in by phishing scams: take the PayPal phishing challenge (even if you don't have a PayPal account!) and see how well you'd be able to defend yourself!