Phish Phried

Many of you have probably upgraded to Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) by now and been confused by what the “phishing filter” is and whether it is a good idea to enable it.  So what does it do?  Phishing (pronounced "fishing") uses a variety of methods to trick you into revealing valuable personal or financial information. These methods include fake web sites or deceptive e-mail messages that mimic trusted businesses and brands in order to steal information such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and Social Security numbers. 

Internet Explorer 7’s filter and other phishing filters attempt to verify the validity of web site address to warn you of suspicious activity.  The downside of phishing filters is that they increase the time to browse to legitimate sites because of this verification process.  Microsoft has released several patches to IE7 to improve the efficiency of the verification. 

 If you decide to not utilize a phishing filter then please be cautious and check URLs by looking at page properties when entering personal information.   Most requests for information should occur under a secure connection so look for https:// in the address bar and should include fully qualified domain names not numeric IP addresses.  In addition you should avoid entering information when requests are unsolicited – most legitimate requests for information will not come via unsolicited email.  Also consider the use of a special low limit credit card for online transactions.