Phishing is an email scam that pretend itself to be from genuine sources like Gmail ,Paypal and bank houses , to cheat the user and take away his account informations. Phishing mails usually includes a link that looks exactly as the web site from they are claiming to be from .Here is few tips by which you can identify and differentiate phishing mails in your inbox .

1.Find out phishing emails using Iconix :

Iconix is free software that attaches a safe sign on emails that are from original sources ,provided the service is already in their database . Paypal ,Ebay ,Visa etc . are already in their database . And when you receive emails from these trusted sources , you will see icons attached as shown below .

Download Iconix

2.Identify phishing mails :Check incoming email address .

Emails from original sources will be in proper format . That is , an email from Paypal will be something like support@paypal.com . And the phishing email cannot mimic this .

3.Check for SSL security :

Email services and payment gateways uses SSL security to encrypt password and user information . You will see a lock icon near the URL box and progression bar . Phishing email links will not have SSL security . So be careful while logging into your email , Paypal or back accounts .

4.Find out the location and other details of email sender:

You can track the location and other details of email sender , from the email itself . Read this article find out the location of an email . So whenever you are asked to verify your Gmail account  , just check out the email location . If its from Mountain view CA , probably its a genuine mail .

5.Don’t panic :
I usually receive emails claiming to be from Gmail team . They will ask to verify our accounts by filling user name and password . And a note attached : verify your email within 30m minutes after opening this email !. So normally people would  rush to the phishing link and submit their account account information . So my advice is not to panic . Identify each aspects and analyze the mail , if its something related with sensitive informations.

Do you have any other tips to identify phishing mails ?? Share them here >>

Recently I got an email saying that its from Gmail team . The email asks for an update in Gmail account settings . It continues as follows .

”
Dear Gmail valued members,
To be stay longer with google maill account safely
Please go to update your email account to our data base.
This updata system is used to filter too many email account in our database.
We will place the accounts updated and will reject accounts not updated
To update your email account please clickhere ( Sorry I can’t post the link here )

Do not late of 60 minutes to update after open this email
Stay your email account safely in google

The Gmail Team ” ( Pasted exactly from the email )

After reading the mail content , I concluded that its a possible phishing attack on Gmail . Look at the spelling of mail . ..LOL!!  Another big reason to confirm that its from Gmail team .

I have traced the IP address of the attacker (219.83.122.172)  who operates  from Jakartha Indonesia .
So beware guys ….

Phishing is a kind of e-mail fraud scam conducted for the purposes of information or identity theft . Phishing site exactly looks like the original site in its color scheme , layout and design . Phishers generally imitates PayPal , bank sites, social networking sites etc. But i got shocked when i received the following PM in digital point webmaster forum.

Clicking on the link forwarded me to this page.

( Digital point phishing -Click to make it larger )
I was in an idle mode for few minutes . So i thought its because they are asking me to log in . It was surprised to know that returned nothing when i logged in . Then i checked the URL
Oh my gosh!!

I ran back to my CP In DP and changed my password and user name.
At the end of the story i reported the phisher to kaspersky , dp modertors , mozilla and symantec.

So be careful while reading emails leading you to a login page . Check out the URL before you enter a user name or password . Always look for identity information (Check if SSL is enabled or not) before using paypal , credit card payments , social networking sites etc.