Phishing, pronounced just like fishing, is a term you must be aware if you use the Internet for any kind of sensitive transactions.  You could be at risk of a phishing attack if you use online accounts such as Paypal or your bank account, credit card account, etc.

Quoting Wikipedia,

Phishing is 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. Communications purporting to be from PayPal, eBay or online banks are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging and it often directs users to enter details at a website.

I had written on How to spot a fake PayPal email in the past and it was well received. Today, I received an improved version of another PayPal phishing attack by email. I think this is another good chance to raise awareness on such attacks and what you should be watching for.

In the past post, we looked at a few clues that gave away the PayPal phishing attempt. The clues in the last email were:

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Hello newcomer, did I say welcome to ShanKri-la yet? Before you move on, just wanted to thank you for visiting and we hope you come back and see us again!

Can you spot a fake email when you see one? Especially, one that might be trying to steal your PayPal login information.

Here is an email that I received, at first look, from PayPal. It warns me if i didn’t sign in and update my billing information, my account might even be deleted!

As authentic as the email might seem - notice the phishing attacks are getting better, the English isn’t as broken as we would see, there is a big giveaway if you know what you are looking for.

Clue #1:

Look at the URL of the link they want you to click in the email. It is made to look like a AOL.com address but all they are doing is using aol.com to redirect it to a IP address which has paypal.com word in the url.

Clue #2:

If you failed to sense something is amiss in the link, you can still spot a major flaw. After you click on the link in the email, if you looked at the Location bar in your browser, you’ll see the url as http://201.155.199.155/icons/www.paypal.com/managament/cgi/. But, look how identical the web page looks like compared to an original PayPal page.

The URL shows that it isn’t a paypal.com address you are at. You are at some other server that has the words paypal.com in it’s URL. This should send a big red warning signal to you. IP location software points this server to be located at Cordoba, Mexico.

Once you have missed the second clue, it is very hard to turn back after that because they have copied everything from the real Paypal login page except they have their own PHP script behind the login form. All the links in the fake page actually point to the PayPal’s website as is common in most phishing sites.

Here is the fake PayPal login page:

(fake PayPal login page)

Here is the actual PayPal login page:

(actual PayPal login page)

Once you enter your login credentials and hit Login, you have just given access to your PayPal account to someone else.

Clue #3:

There is another subtle clue that may not be apparent. The page has some extra characters that is totally out of place but hard to spot. I don’t know if it’s a typo or carelessness or if it’s a code for the phishers but mostly likely a typo.

How can you protect yourself from phishing attempts?

You might not be using PayPal but there are many phishing attempts everyday at many financial websites such as Bank websites, Credit Card websites, etc. And it will pay to be careful when you access your accounts from emails such as this.

Here are a few things you could do to protect yourself:

• Look for the clues mentioned above and as you can see they are nothing special but just common sense.
• If you really believe the email could be a real one, just login to the website from your own bookmark to the website or by typing the web address in the browser instead of clicking the link in the email. By practicing this all the time, you wouldn’t even be vulnerable for that one time when you might be tired or not so alert or sleepy and click the link in an email.
• Use a secure browser such as Mozilla Firefox, which has a phishing filter and shows a warning when you access a known phishing site. Internet Explorer 7 and newer browsers also have a similar feature so it pays to upgrade your IE 5/6 to newer versions.

If you are Internet savvy, this is all too familiar to you. But, we all know someone who may be unaware that such attempts are made everyday and we should try to educate them so they won’t be caught unawares.

Update: 6/24

I received a second PayPal phishing attempt and you can read it about it now.

Recently Ashyley of CyberNet News wrote about how someone else can view a MySpace profile’s picture even if the profile was set to private. Apparently, MySpace has fixed this issue.

But, a few weeks back I came across an interesting post at SlickMania about another site named MySpacePrivateProfile.com. As the name implies, all you need to do is paste the friend id from a MySpace profile and it lets you view private pictures from anyone! Says a lot about MySpace security, huh? The sad part is, you don’t even need a MySpace account or be logged in to view someone else’s private pictures!

I didn’t want to link to a site that couldn’t have been designed with good intentions and give them some link juice! It already has a Google PR 2 & Alexa ranking in the 120,000s. It is indicative of the traffic this site is attracting.

I did want to make sure my readers were aware of this security hole and the false sense of security the ‘private’ feature in MySpace might give you.  If you have a MySpace account and have pictures that you think are private, think again.

A good rule of thumb would be to just not to trust any site with pictures or videos that you wouldn’t want someone else to see, however private that website proclaims those to be.

With a lot of people coming here to find out how to unblock a blocked website and searching for information on myspace, bebo, etc., I figured it might be worthwhile to share this information here.

Even if you don’t use this, spread the word to anyone you know who uses MySpace.

I just recently featured Top Greasemonkey Scripts for Gmail 2.0 last week and it was well received. It just goes to show how many people are looking for useful enhancements to Gmail.

One of the most popular script is the Google Account Multi-Login script. The script lets you switch between multiple Gmail accounts without having to log out and sign back in.

The script author has updated this script yesterday with a very important security fix. Here is his words from the update log:

UPDATE (01/13/08): Patched a security hole which could potentially allow a malicious site to steal your passwords. Anyone who has installed this script should reinstall immediately.

If that’s not reason enough, the new script version has an option to prompt for password each time instead of storing it. I have been a little queasy with the script storing passwords for me but I gave in for the ease it offered me in switching between multiple Gmail accounts.

Now, I can’t be happier that I have the option to not store the passwords. I strongly recommend anyone using this script to update immediately.

Google Account Multi-Login

Pongal(?) is an Indian festival celebrating the prosperity bestowed upon us by the sun and rain. It is roughly equivalent to Thanksgiving here in the US. Today is that auspicious day and I would like to wish Happy Pongal to everyone celebrating it!

Friday is here and I am looking forward to a weekend of not doing a whole lot after last 4 weekends of hectic work from my day job.

Without further adieu, here are this week’s pick of extensions.

• Password Hasher: You can create strong passwords with this extension and have it generate unique passwords based on destination. Very good security options available within it.
• Meebo: This is a Firefox extension for the popular web based IM client, Meebo. After installing, a new tab will open and all your chat sessions will reside in this tab and you can view all your contacts in the sidebar. Has some nice features like flashing tabs when you have new messages, group chat, send a file, chat logs, etc. [via CyberNet News]
• Price Drop: Adds a ‘Track this item’ line to a Amazon product page so you can get notified when the price of that item drops. Even after purchasing this is helpful to get a refund. Tools menu shows you all the items you are watching and you can delete the stuff you are nto interested in anymore. [via gHacks]
• Interclue: Think Cooliris done better. Way better. Interclue lets you preview a link and has an option to clicking the link to preview instead of mouse over avoiding those accidental annoying pop-overs. Plus, it adds options in a preview to bookmark, email, copy the url to a clipboard and open in tabs options. It has a lot more features to list here so try it out if you have been looking for something like this. [via Download Squad]
• GDirections: If you often delete your browser cookies and are tired of entering your address in Google or Yahoo Maps, you will love this extension. It can remember up to 3 addresses and you can get directions by selecting an address in your browser and a right-click.

If you are a Gmail & Greasemonkey user, get your fix of scripts from Top Greasemonkey Scripts for New Gmail 2.0 . If you are looking for more Firefox extensions, check out any of the posts in this series listed below.

Wish everyone a great Friday and a good weekend.

 Thanks Silki, for noticing that I have the wrong year in the title! I blame it on the lack of caffeine this morning.

A lot of programs we install in our computer end up making entries in our startup eventually slowing down the Windows startup. And some other programs sneak into the registry with malicious intent.

RunScanner is a freeware utility which scans your computer for all running programs, autostart locations, drivers, services and hijack points.

RunScanner Quick Facts

• Detects registry changes, misconfigurations caused by spyware, viruses or plain user error
• Operates in 3 modes - Beginner, Classic and Expert based on your level of comfort in troubleshooting
• Checks 100+ start/hijack locations
• Does an optional online malware analysis
• Powerful file filtering and MD5 checking with services like Castle Cops
• Analyzes loaded modules and file certificates
• Also has history backup/restore
• Offers import and import of .run files

I have used HijackThis! so far but this utility sounds very promising when it comes to battling startup and hijack problems.

One of the most appealing features I think is the ability to export a .run file and then importing to their support forum. Expert users there will analyze your .run file and delete the entries that shouldn’t be there and give you a new .run file. You can just import this and ‘Fix selected items’.

It is very useful for anyone who isn’t too comfortable deleting stuff off their computers. In fact, you can even get your aunt to use RunScanner and send you the .run file and you can fix her slow startup without even visiting her.

Sized at 1.758 KB, this tiny standalone (no installation required) application packs so many features and I can’t recommend it enough. You could even carry it in your USB drive all the time.

Download RunScanner

How often do you run such a utility? Weekly out of habit or just anytime you find your computer startup taking forever?

You just had a dose of free software in my last post. AVG Anti-virus is one of the most popular free anti-virus products out there. But, free doesn’t mean free as in beer like most open source software but comes with some limitations but usually enough for an average home user.

ComputerActive is giving away free licensed copies of AVG Anti-virus Professional Edition until January 17th 2008. It is priced at $29.95 for a yearly subscription. Here are the difference between the FREE edition and a PRO edition.

I have found Avast Home Edition & ClamWin to be very useful free alternatives to AVG. But, I am interested in looking at what a professional edition offers in addition when compared to a free alternative. Especially when I can try it for FREE!

What do you use for an anti-virus in your computer? Will you try AVG Professional Edition?

ComputerActive Link

Mirror 1 - Rapidshare link

Mirror 2 - Mega Upload link

[via Life Rocks 2.0]