Online Merchants Beware Of ‘Phishing’

Businesses with online merchant accounts must beware
of a process called ‘Phishing’. This is a fraudulent
activity many cyber thieves resort to in order to
cheat you of your online funds and products.

The process is simple and is designed to take you
unawares. Though ‘Phishing’ is an illegal activity and
any one engaging in it is liable to be punished by
law, catching the crook is the crux of the matter.

‘Phishers’ send out hundreds of emails to unsuspecting
people asking for personal details such as mother’s
maiden names, surnames, date of birth credit card
numbers etc. The intention is to use this information
to try and crack online passwords. ' Many online
merchants have had their online payment processing
accounts hacked only because they fell for one of the
many ‘Phishing’ tactics online.

A ‘Phisher’ will send out hundreds of mails disguised
as a message or even a page that looks like a payment
processor page or an online bank login page. The
content mail will probably try to fool the user (by
asking them to login and change their password) into
logging into their online account by entering their
username and password.

When the ‘submit’ button is clicked, instead of the
account page being opened, nothing happens, or so many
people think. What has in fact happened is that the
password and username has been emailed to some distant
account and may be used in a matter of minutes to log
in and change the password of the account by the
‘Phisher’.

There is only one way to avoid this and that is to
close all internet applications and log into your
online merchant account site by manually typing in the
URL of the site. Never click on an email link to go to
your merchant account site.