Why You Get Phished

[Guest]

It's basically your fault.

Why You Get Phished : Read more

 

[icepick314]

how about being smart and don't give out your personal and financial information in an email that claims to be from a lawyer who represents a dead African royalty or Britain philanthropist who needs your personal and financial information to transfer to US bank account then will give you large percentage for your "help"?

this is 21st Century and a new millennium, dammit!!

stop being a internet noob in an age of instant knowledge with Google, Wikipedia, and/or Bing...

 

[icepick314]

[citation][nom]icepick314[/nom]transfer[/citation]

transfer their money

 

[hoofhearted]

Trust no-one. Especially when you can't see them.

 

[gm0n3y]

Why would your bank need to email you? I have accounts at a few different banks and I don't recall ever getting an email from them.

 

[house70]

So, the study concluded that the more information you exchange online the more likely you are to get phished.
Duh... who would have thought of it...

 

[wavebossa]

Giving our personal information online is worse than yelling your social security number at the top of your lungs in a crowded area.... because people my forget, computers dont.

Morale of the story... dont be stupid.

 

[davewolfgang]

[citation][nom]icepick314[/nom]how about being smart and don't give out your personal and financial information in an email that claims to be from a lawyer who represents a dead African royalty or Britain philanthropist who needs your personal and financial information to transfer to US bank account then will give you large percentage for your "help"?[/citation]

You got that one too!!! I wish I'd hear back..... ;-)

 

[dapneym]

I've received phishing emails before, but quite honestly I can't imagine how people actually fall for them. The grammar is usually atrocious, the claims outlandish, and it shouldn't take much judgement to realise that the emails are fake. Granted that judgement must be in short supply as the phishers and scammers wouldn't keep doing it unless they got enough people responding.

I remember one particular message that I received via Facebook tried to tell me a relative I'd never heard of in Africa had just died and that they left me quite a bit of money. People just really need to use/learn common sense. If you've never heard of the person messaging you and the claims seem odd, then don't reply. Mark it as spam and/or delete it.

 

[Marco925]

Woot! Brock University!!!

 

[of the way]

I like responding to them. See if I can get any information out of them. Hasn't worked yet, but it's a good timewaster. Something for me to do, and something to waste their time. They're usually horrible though. They respond using different names for themselves, and even called me a couple of random names.

 

[wiyosaya]

IMHO, use a service like www.sneakemail.com It lets you create an e-mail address for any purpose, then forwards e-mail received at that address to your "real" e-mail. The number of e-mail addresses that you can create is unlimited. If you get spam on any one, you can delete just that address. IMHO, works great.

 

[shanky887614]

of course the more you use the internet the more spam you get, didnt you gusy know that most sites sell your details to other companies

 

[house70]

And i really resent the idea of clients being at fault for this.
nobody seems to remember a short while ago when Epsilon had an "incident" in which a lot of their clients' e-mail addresses got "lost" or "hacked" (read: Epsilon employee got rich quickly). I for one know that I do not give my email address to these scumbags for sure, so how do they get it? From firms that are supposed to be very secure and safe in terms of safekeeping my info (which they got from third parties, like banks and other institutions that we HAVE to deal with). So, I would appreciate some objectivity when assigning blame. I am pretty sure almost nobody on this forum gave away his email address just like that, and we are not PC noobs, and yet everybody gets phishing emails.
Does anyone here still believe in that little disclaimer that says "your e-mail address is never shared with third party companies" or something of that nature? How can one verify that? Utter BS, if you ask me.

 

[wild9]

Researchers from the University of Buffalo, University of Texas, Brock University and Ball State University found that if you receive a lot of email, habitually respond to a good portion of it, maintain a lot of online relationships and conduct a large number of transactions online, you are more likely to receive phishing emails than those who limit their online activity.

..and you needed a University study to tell you this? What next: walking in a park significantly increases your chance of treading in dog sh*t?!

 

[11796pcs]

I would not be suprised if some companies "hack" their own e-mail address databases so they can sell them to others. Welcome to capitalism.

 

[doive1231]

Did they all send each other spam to find out?

 

[fir_ser]

Using multiple email accounts is a good way to manage the email letters that you receive, and it could reduce the risk of being phished.

 

[cookoy]

If you happen to stand in front of the nozzle when i fired the gun, it's basically your fault. Ok, that's taking it too extreme. But i agree that you just have to be extra careful when online, especially with anonymous or unknown entities.

 

[K2N hater]

Dumb research. Let's talk statistics.... the more you use your email the more likely your address will be obtained by spammers.

The causes are:
(1) spamming bots (in general viruses which are able to read contacts and then disclosing all contacts of the infected host);
(2) information leak on service host (some company or internet service which requested your email as a term of service might leak personal data at a certain point or even sell it for money);
(3) public mail (whoever chooses to make one's mail address visible for any reason will eventually have to deal with hundreds of unwanted mail every day).