The Internet and YOU series Part 2

     On my last post I discussed the concept of phishing. Today, I'll be explaining a little bit about how you, as a safe internet user, can prevent yourself from getting led into phishing traps and how to keep your information secure.

     The first thing you can do about phishing is to start using a phishing filter. Internet explorer 7 actually has a built in phishing filter. You can activate it by clicking on "tools" then "Phishing Filter" and click on "Turn On Automatic Website Checking...." This filter basically works by comparing the websites you visit with a list of legitimate and illegitimate websites that Microsoft updates on your computer. The only problem with this is that there have been some reports that the filter sometimes doesn't catch every phishing website since the aforementioned list of sites is sometimes not entirely kept up to date. However, this is better than nothing. If nothing else, you should always check the address bar to make sure the site your on matches what the address bar says. For example, if your on Myspace your address bar should always say "http://myspace.com/" if there is anything else before the ".com" it might be a phishing site. If your using Safari on your Mac or PC, there is unfortunately no built in filter. So, you'll just have to check suspicious site either by checking the address of the website your on, or even clearing it through a website called "Phishtank.com." It's actually pretty easy, you just go the website, and paste the address of the suspicious website into the bar with the button that says "Is it a phish?" It has a list of sites that is constantly updated and will tell you if the site is safe or not.

     There's one more option though: getting another browser. Although some people simply use the internet browser that their computer came with (e.g. Internet Explorer or Safari) there are actually many other browsing programs out there. Sometimes, these are referred to as "third-party" programs, since another entity besides the one that made your operating system (Microsoft or Apple) created the program.

     The most popular of these browsers is Mozilla Firefox. Not only is it free, but it is also several times faster and more secure than Internet Explorer and even Safari. Firefox also has a built in phishing filter that actually gets its list of sites from phishtank.com which, as I mentioned is constantly updated (unlike Internet Explorer), and it will automatically notify you when you go into a phishing site!

     So, that is how to keep your sensitive information out of the hands of nasty phishing sites! Unfortunately, this post is already pretty long, so I think I'll leave website encryption for another time. Thanks for reading everyone!

Oh, and happy surfing!!