You’ve Been Spoofed!

phishing-scammer Spoofed websites are popular among folks looking for a good time on the internet. Mostly these are sites that contain parodies and satire content about public figures, movies and events. However there is a rising number of spoofed websites not designed to entertain at all, these are linked to phishing scams that are made to look like legitimate websites. These cyber criminals threaten your online safety by posing as legitimate sites that contain malicious software and aims to get personal information like your social or credit card number.

Spoofed websites mask their identity by using a legit website’s design, keywords and web address. Some use variations of the original web address, for example http://www.mytechteam.net can be spoofed as http://www.mytechteam.org or use some other variation that looks like a simple typo error. This is called “cyber-squatting” or “typo-squatting”; they rely on common typo errors and make a spoofed site spelled the same way, filled with malicious software.

Other more sophisticated means use domain forwarding, where even if you have a real address, they can use control characters to make the address bar to display an address totally different from the site you are on. Fortunately, there are ways to avoid it, with a little vigilance you can keep your online safety and protect yourself, your computer and your family from this kind of attack.

Use an updated browser; they are more equipped with filters that detect phishing sites, spoofed websites, malware and other viruses. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to switch browsers; you can simply upgrade your current version and keep all your favorites. Internet Explorer 8 has SmartScreen Filter that detects unsafe and potentially unsafe sites and sends alerts while you are browsing. It also highlights the domain name in black so that you can easily spot any typo-squatting you may encounter.

If you are frequenting a specific site, bookmark it or add to your favorites. This will save you time in typing the address, make it easier to go back to and keep you safe from spoofed sites.

Never go online without an updated anti-virus and spyware protection.

Avoid clicking on links from pop-ups or emails that you were not expecting. Most phishing scams that lead to spoofed websites lure you in by using a legitimate looking email, often posing as Microsoft, PayPal and the like.

When visiting sites that require sensitive information such as credit card numbers, social security numbers, addresses, etc. verify the site’s certificate by clicking on the icon that appears before or towards the end of the address bar, this would usually tell you if the website you are looking at is secure or not. For Internet Explorer 8 and 7, you will see a padlock towards the end of the address bar that shows Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates. This is an industry wide effort to help users have a more secure browsing experience. For sites that have non-secure content like search engines this does not appear.

When using a search engine, be on the look out for alerts that tell you if a site is potentially harmful or not. Most search engines, such as Google, Bing and Yahoo are already using safety features to protect users from spoofed websites and phishing scams.

If you have encountered a spoofed website, do your part to help keep the online community safer by reporting it to the target website. Be vigilant, don’t get SPOOFED!

Can you spot the difference between a real site and a fraudulent one? Try your hand at detecting phishing sites by visiting the following URL: https://www.phish-no-phish.com/default.aspx

ABOUT MY TECH TEAM:
My Tech Team is a leading online tech support company based in the U.S, providing nationwide on demand enterprise level computer support and protection 24 hours a day and 7 days a week.