More About Phishing

In an effort to educate our members about how to stay safe while online, here is a quick FAQ about phishing scams.

There is also a 5 step lesson on how to better protect yourself online that was drafted by our webmaster. Also included are links to free software that will help protect you. That tutorial can be found here.

What is phishing?

Phishing is the act of tricking someone into giving them confidential information or tricking them into doing something they normally would not or should not do. For example: sending an email to a user falsely claiming to be from the credit union in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that could be used for identity theft. For more information

Why is it called "phishing"

"phishing" comes from the analogy that internet scammers are using email bait to fish for passwords and financial data from the sea of internet users. Since many hackers have a tendancy of replacing "f" with "ph", the term was derived. This term has evolved over the years to include not only obtaining user account details but access to all personal and financial data. For more information.