Technology Solutions Centre - IT Security

Minimizing Phishing Threats

Reported Phishing attacks have increased by a factor of over 23 compared to 2003 (2560 reports in January 2005 verses only 110 reported in December 2003 - Anti-Phishing Working Group).  This increase shows clear signs the Phishing scams are getting better and more difficult to detect.  To get a better understanding of what Phishing is, please see the Common Threats to Computer Security section or click here.

There are a couple of free pluggin tools you can incorporate into your web browser that will help to weed out potential Phishing attacks:

SpoofStick - For Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, SpoofStick will help to weed out potential Phishing sites by identiying the site name in a taskbar.  Many times, Phishers try to hide their web sites from potential prey by obfusacating the site address in a web link.  SpoofStick will report the actual site (different domain, IP address), verses the website you think you are at.

Netcraft Anti-Phishing Toolbar - For Internet Explorer only, the Netcraft toolbar is a very comprehensive pluggin that draws on Netcraft's massive database of known Phishing sites.  Takes a bit of configuring and may slow your browsing down a bit, but worth checking out.


Test Your Phishing Detection Skills
Mailfrontier has an interesting Phishing test you can take that will help to sharpen your skills at detecting potential Phishing scams.  The link to this IQ test is here.  Just click on each of the ten examples and rate them.  Interesting stuff.