Definition: Phishing is a fraudulent attempt, usually made through email, phone calls, SMSes etc, that seeks personal and confidential information, such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly even money), often for malicious reasons. This is done by people who pretend to be trustworthy entities in an electronic communication.
Description: The 'phishers' contact a person thorough a telephone call, SMS or email and claim to represent a business organization with whom the person has been interacting, like a bank or credit card company, among others. They then ask the user to share details of their accounts on some pretext. On the basis of the information shared, the phishers can produce duplicate ATM/credit cards and perform transaction from that duplicate card. In some cases, the phishers create dummy sites of well-known financial institutions which look like the original ones. The fake site URL, too, looks similar to that of the original site. To avoid phishing, one should never respond to any electronic communication, such as any popup, email, SMS or a phone call - no matter how trustworthy it may seem - that seeks personal information such as username, passwords, bank account/ATM/credit card details etc. We should check and ensure that the sites where transactions are being done use the secure protocol e.g https://hdfcbank.com , as the transactions are secure in such a transfer and phishers cannot steal the encrypted data from these sites. There are anti-phishing websites which publish exact messages that have been recently circulating on the Internet. These sites often provide specific details about the particular messages.
Description: The 'phishers' contact a person thorough a telephone call, SMS or email and claim to represent a business organization with whom the person has been interacting, like a bank or credit card company, among others. They then ask the user to share details of their accounts on some pretext. On the basis of the information shared, the phishers can produce duplicate ATM/credit cards and perform transaction from that duplicate card. In some cases, the phishers create dummy sites of well-known financial institutions which look like the original ones. The fake site URL, too, looks similar to that of the original site. To avoid phishing, one should never respond to any electronic communication, such as any popup, email, SMS or a phone call - no matter how trustworthy it may seem - that seeks personal information such as username, passwords, bank account/ATM/credit card details etc. We should check and ensure that the sites where transactions are being done use the secure protocol e.g https://hdfcbank.com , as the transactions are secure in such a transfer and phishers cannot steal the encrypted data from these sites. There are anti-phishing websites which publish exact messages that have been recently circulating on the Internet. These sites often provide specific details about the particular messages.
