If you receive an email from a bank, credit card, eBay or some other online service asking you to click a link and login to verify your account information, be wary: you may be the bait for a Phishing expedition. Phishing is when a thief pretends to be a valid business, say eBay, and sends thousands of emails to people asking them to click a link provided in the email to verify their account information. Very often the email will include a warning that if you do not click the link and login your account may be deactivated. The link provided in the email will take the user to a site that looks remarkably like the business that the phisherman is pretending to be. Unsuspecting users type in their username and password, often also providing their credit card information. As soon as this happens, the thief has the user's information and can log in to the real site and act as if they are the user they just scammed. This can often lead to an empty bank account, maxed out credit cards and worse. What is most disgusting of all with this type of scam is that the thieves very often pretend that they are 'reviewing their security policies' or 'have found unusual activity on the account' and act as if they are actually helping the user protect their information.

Of course, sometimes, real businesses and websites contact their users for very valid reasons. How, then, can you protect yourself from becoming a victim of Phishing? One very easy way is to never click a link provided in one of these emails. Go to the real business' main site and login as you usually do, then update whatever information you need to. Always if you have a doubt as to whether the email is valid, contact the business and ask them. A simple email asking them if they sent you the email in question will suffice.

Phishing is so common these days that many reputable businesses never, or very rarely, send emails to users asking them to update their account information. So, most of the time it is safe to assume that any email like this is a trap and someone is trying to steal your information. With just a little perseverance and investigation, however, you can protect yourself from this sort of scam.

Now, for the Cool Site of the Week... This week's featured site is FactCheck.org. I'm not sure how many readers are political junkies like me, but I just can't get enough of politics. I devour the Sunday talk shows and listen to CNN, Fox News and MSNBC more than is probably good for my health. One thing that always strikes me as odd, however, is how the political spin doctors constantly say the other side is lying. For example, the Republican guy says the spending for some federal program is growing while the Democrat guy says it's being cut. Well, if you ever want to find the truth (which, interestingly, is usually what neither side says), go to FactCheck.org. They do extensive research, offer up facts and references and let the truth be known. If you are a political partisan however, this site may not be for you as they often catch both the left and the right in lies and misuse of facts.

If you have any questions or suggestions for future articles, please email me at mike@MikeBryant.com