What is phishing?
February 16th, 2007 by Randy Stewart, Product ManagerIn an earlier post, I mentioned a spammer who was phishing getting convicted and facing up to a 101 years in prison as a result. But what exactly is phishing?
Photo by Flickr user thermodynamix
Wikipedia defines phishing as
“a criminal activity using social engineering techniques. Phishers attempt to fraudulently acquire sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an electronic communication. Phishing is typically carried out using email or an instant message, although phone contact has been used as well. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, and technical measures.”
In a nutshell, phishing is something criminals do to trick people into giving them sensitive information. The stolen information is then used by the criminal for further illicit activities.
Boxbe and phishing
So, what does Boxbe do about phishing? First, the only email that you receive when using Boxbe is from senders that you have approved, have passed a human test or have paid a fee. Second, we use two emerging industry standards, SPF and DomainKeys to increase the likelihood that the sender isn’t spoofing or faking their email address.
Is it a 100% solution? No. Unfortunately, we can’t guard against all forms of social engineering or deception. What we can do is guard against emails from entering your inbox that make false claims as to their point of origin. The rest is up to you.
Learn more about phishing
We suggest that everyone educate themselves against phishing. Here are some great places to learn more about phishing:
May 24th, 2007 at 4:20 pm
[...] Task Force (IETF). DKIM is one of the standards that we use at Boxbe to keep your email safe from phishing attacks and fake emails in [...]