Phishing means accidental visit to a website which resembles like the original site. This is infact a big threat to those who are connected to Internet as users are simply duped by stealing their credentials. The process will kick start with the hackers sending fraudulent emails (which may look similar with all details including the signatory part) to several IDs by guess work. Nearly, 95% of these emails will be addressed in the name of several prominent banks like ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank and others. It will request users to visit a provided web address and login by entering their username and password. These data will be stored as plain text in the hackers web server.
Initially, customers were not warned by bankers against these threats and as a result many of them lost their money through this route. But nowadays, banks have posted warning notices on their websites and new customers are aware against Phishing. Moreover, several print and television medias also played an important role in exposing this threat.
In order to protect yourselves against phishing, you have to follow the following steps
(1) Never click on a link which requests you to enter username and password to login.
(2) Visit banking related websites directly from your browser namely Internet Explorer or FireFox.
Note: Internet Explorer 8 has a feature to protect you against Phishing.
