How to avoid Fraud and Phishing on the Internet

Wikipedia defines phishing as "the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication." With phishing, a legitimate web page such as a bank's site is reproduced in "look and feel" on another server under control of the hacker. The hackers intent is to dupe the user into thinking they are connected to a trusted site, in order to capture the user name and password. I've had a PayPal account and conducted business on the Internet for over 10 years. Here's how you avoid being a victim of fraud or phishing.

Step1

Delete the phishing email. If you responded to the email, log in to your account and change your password and security questions immediately. Make sure you go over your account and check for any unauthorized transactions.

Step2

Anytime you go to a web site that involves making a payment, make sure you see "https" in the URL. For example, PayPal will show: https://www.paypal.com. HTTPS stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol over Secure Socket Layer. It is a URI scheme used to indicate a secure HTTP connection. If you don't see https to start the web address, stay away from the web site.

Step3

Pay close attention to your emails. Your financial institution will never ask you to change your user name or password. If you get an email asking you to change your personal information it is fraudulent.

Step4

Look out for emails that address you as "Dear PayPal User", this is a bogus email. PayPal will address you by your actual user name, however, PayPal still will not ask you to change any personal information. Most of the time if you're receiving an email from PayPal it's subject is, "You've Got Cash!" That's what I like to see.