Spam comes in a variety of forms, including fraudulent messages. This mass-messaging is called ’spoofing’ or ‘password phishing.’
Such fraudulent practices involve messages that appear to be from a legitimate source, or the creation of an official-looking webpage that asks you to provide your username and password or other personal information. Such messages or pages could ask for your Social Security number, bank account number, PIN number, credit card number, mother’s maiden name, or birthday.
Spammers often ask for this information in an attempt to steal your email account, your money, your credit, or your identity.
Many email clients including Google, Yahoo and MSN provide services which identify a phishing email. Besides that, when using Internet Explorer 7 or Firefox as your browsers, they actively monitor the sites you visit and flag them if you visit a suspected phishing site.
Most email client’s phishing alerts operate automatically, much like spam filtering. A spam filters automatically divert smessages that are suspected of being unwanted messages into ‘Spam’. Similarly, phishing alerts automatically display warnings with messages that are suspected of being phishing attacks so that users know to take care before providing any personal information as shown in the image below

You should always be wary of any message that asks for your personal information, or messages that refer you to a webpage asking for personal information.
Here’s what you can do to protect yourself and stop fraudsters:
* Make sure the URL domain on the given page is correct, and click on any images and links to verify that you are directed to proper pages within the site. For example, the URL is http://yourbankname.com/ or, for even more security, https://yourbankname.com/. Although some links may appear to contain ‘yourbankname.com,’ you may be redirected to another site after entering such addresses into your browser.
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