What is phishing?

• A phishing email contains a link (URL) that appears to be genuine. For example, it might read "www.trustedbank.verification.com/personal_banking.html". This would lead you to think that it is part of the "trusted bank" web site. However, the link actually says that it is going to the site verification.com i.e. the phisher's site. The site that you go to, will look exactly like the site you are used to using to access your bank account.
• Recently, these scams have become even more sophisticated and can even hide the links they are going to.
• In the past few years, phishing has affected social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace. Here the aim is to obtain sufficient information to carry out identity theft.