Phishing? What's Phishing?

Thankyou so much for your VERY informative help.
I know you probably will think I am daft but as a teacher albeit not a computer literate one or a young wizz kid, I am struggling. I have received e-mails from someone supposedly from Zimbabwe,who claims to have suffered under Mugabe, and is asking me to invest money for her as she says she knows I am a Christian and am trustworthy. How the hell did they get my email address? Oh and they are asking for my 'phone number. Please can you help me? I would be so grateful for your help.Are these people for real?
Is this phishing and what are they up to, they won't leave me alone.They are now offering me 25%
it is no one I teach as they do not have my email.
Lynette Smith.

Delete those mails and do not respond to any further contact. That's a classic internet scam and should be avoided at all cost.

I keep getting a messages saying that my msn address is not verified! How do I fix the problem??

Leo, How did you that?! I hovered my mouse over that sample ebay link in your Phishing article, just like you said to do, but it was really a Link to Latte for Leo!! Tell us how you did that! BTW, lattes are fattening! Michelle

Leo Guess What!??
I've got too much time, and so found out that
http://www.ebay.cc is a real website.
Er...Well..It was.
Now it's for sale!
As I said, I've got too much free time.

Well,
see-ya later!!!

PS:
Msn.net takes you to Msn.com
ebay.hacker.com takes you to sea.search.msn.com
my typing error of Ebat.cc also takes you to sea.search.msn.com
And http://72.3.133.152 takes you to a custom made 404 does not exist, by Plentic.

Dear Dr. Leo,
The phishing attacked my email address just in the same way as you described. I received an email which seems to come from Window Live... and ask me to supply my personal information to update my account, otherwise my account will be closed in a couple of days. To avoid any inconvenience, I updated my personal information. Since yesterday, I failed to log in my account. Subsequently, some of my friends informed me that they received an email from my hotmail account claiming that "I" was in trouble in a African country where I have never been and ask them to send "me" some money. Thank you for your informative help. I will never be a fish of "phishing".

When signing in to hotmail tonight, I was asked to verify my account and give my email address and password again. Then I was asked whether or not I agreed to hotmail live's terms of service and privacy policy. I clicked on yes, and got the same screen again. I completed it a second time. Then I could not log into hotmail and was told that my site might not be working at this time or my site might not be a certified windows live site. Your article makes it appear that this web site was actually phishing. Now what do I do?

I've had my own experiences with phishing, which I have written about on my own site: http://www.geocities.com/terryhollett2003/Phishing.htm

hi,
i would just like to say thank you,
i recently have been getting emails from according to email from the royal bank of scotland,
the email actually said:

Dear Royal Bank Of Scotland Customer,

Update and verify your information by clicking the link below:
">https://www.rbsdigital.com/default.aspx?refererident/upgrade>

*Important*

NOTE: FAILURE CAN RESULT TO ACCOUNT SUSPENSION.

P. R. Crush
Security Advisor
The Royal Bank of Scotland © 2008.
i did click on the link but my security on the pc said that the site is a reported phishing website, so i typed what a phising site was on google and this is why im reading this article.
i didnt have a clue about it

I assume that the following (series) of emails to me are a scam, but Hotmail makes it almost impossible to verify. Can anybody help?
Thanks! -Rich

[LARGE collection of scam/phishing examples deleted.]

To post a comment on "Phishing? What's Phishing?", please return to that article's main page.