Phishing on the web and how to protect yourself.

First of all you might not even know what being phished means. Phishing is used to steal user information, passwords, logins, and other data that I'm sure no one would willingly give up.

Every time you login to check your e-mail you got a link for instance I go to http://mail.yahoo.com a phishing link would look something like this http://jokesonyou.mail.yahoo.freesite.com That's the first clue you're on a phishing site.

However if you have children on your computer like me, the kids will pay no attention to the address bar or what site they're clicking, you may be thinking that phishing is limited to ebay, yahoo and paypal but it's not.

Since phishing sites are everywhere, easy to make and require no html skills, it is very possible that a 10 year old kid could make one in under an hour. Now this kid might not have the intentions of stealing your bank account but he might have the intentions of stealing a Runescape or Build-a-bear account for personal gain.

To the point Firefox is what I use but you can easily find out if your internet browser has a built in phishing filter or if you need to download one. Mozilla firefox 3 and later already have it built in. If you're a beginner in computers and looking to learn more about phishing follow this link here.

Also if you've came across a site that you suspect as a user to be a phishing site you can submit it here. Which is one of the reasons I use Google as a search engine. Google filters your results, all the phishing pages that could be there, have been either taken down or avoided. I admit phishing pages aren't what they use to be.

Most of the time you will receive them in your e-mail claiming to be your bank or something else that 99% of the population have like a trust fund, or insurance of some sort. On the web they are like a needle in a haystack although they are still there.