What is phishing and how do I prevent phishing attacks?

Phishing is an attempt to mislead Internet users into taking some action that may expose themselves to a serious security risk or theft of personal information.

A common example of phishing is when a "phisher" produces a booby-trapped fake website that looks and works exactly the same as your online banking site. He or she then sends you a phishing email that looks genuine, inviting you to login into your online banking allegedly for some sort of security reason such as password or credential update.

If you click on a link provided in this scam email, you are being redirected to that fake website so that they can hijack your password and bank account number.

To protect yourself form attacks of such kind, make sure you are always running anti-phishing software (Norton comes with built-in phishing filters) and never open suspect emails requiring you to login or to update your password.