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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve Camray.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology? With

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Speaker 1: tech stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hi, everybody,

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Speaker 1: welcome to the podcast. My name is Chris Pollette. I'm

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Speaker 1: an editor here at How Stuff Works, and sitting next

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Speaker 1: to me, as always, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland. Hey there,

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Speaker 1: that was just for you, Chris. Thanks welcome. I appreciate

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Speaker 1: that you sure. Are you sure that's you and not

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Speaker 1: somebody else? I'm pretty sure it's me this time. Uh,

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Speaker 1: they look like you, but I can't. Yeah. We wanted

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Speaker 1: to talk today about kind of an insidious problem that's

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Speaker 1: on the internet, although it didn't officially you know, start

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Speaker 1: on the internet. It's actually older than the Internet is.

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Speaker 1: But we're talking about phishing scams, and that's fishing with

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Speaker 1: a pH Yeah, that's true. Um, the these these are

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Speaker 1: social engineering scams. There. They're little ploys designed to trick

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Speaker 1: you into giving away your personal information. Yeah. And the

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Speaker 1: bait that they use, which is part of why it's

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Speaker 1: called phishing, is uh, it usually plays usually plays upon

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Speaker 1: your baser personality traits. Let's say like greed. That's a

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Speaker 1: big one. In fact, that's probably the main one, but

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Speaker 1: other ones like Vanity also play a part in certain

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Speaker 1: uh phishing scams. So let's let's talk about a couple

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Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about probably the best known scam,

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Speaker 1: especially when it comes to email scams, which is the

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Speaker 1: Nigerian email scam or the four one nine scam. Well,

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Speaker 1: you know, I was actually contacted by somebody in Nigeria. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and they said if I just gave them some personal information,

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Speaker 1: they would uh millions of dollars. Yeah, that's that's the

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Speaker 1: basis for this scam. Now, the original scam was not

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Speaker 1: a phishing scam originally it was it was just so

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Speaker 1: that you would send them money, so you would wire

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Speaker 1: this person money directly, um. But they would not have

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Speaker 1: access to your personal information, just your money. So hey,

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Speaker 1: there's a bright side, right. But they they have kind

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Speaker 1: of evolved since then, and often you will find these

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Speaker 1: these um emails. Uh. They're called Nigerian scams because a

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Speaker 1: lot of them do seem to originate from Nigeria. UM,

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Speaker 1: not all of them. They could be from anywhere. It's

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Speaker 1: just that's the name they've been given. And the claim

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Speaker 1: is that there is an enormous sum of money that

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Speaker 1: they're trying to get. This person is trying to get

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Speaker 1: out of whatever country they're in, and they want to

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Speaker 1: use you as an accomplice to hold onto this money.

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Speaker 1: And you get to keep a portion of that money

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Speaker 1: as as part of the deal. And as the deal

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Speaker 1: goes on, things start to mess up and the person says, oh,

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Speaker 1: you know, um, I've got to bribe this this official.

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna need a thousand dollars from you so that

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Speaker 1: I can bribe this person and then we'll be able

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Speaker 1: to get you the millions and millions of dollars. And

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Speaker 1: with that promise the millions of dollars, lots of people

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Speaker 1: are willing to part with substantial sums of money thinking

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Speaker 1: they're gonna get practically something for nothing. And there are

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Speaker 1: people who have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in

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Speaker 1: these scams. That's true, Um, and uh, it's it's kind

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Speaker 1: of impressive the list of people who have gotten caught

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Speaker 1: by these scams, including Harvard professor a few years ensnared

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Speaker 1: by one of these these ploys. Um. They actually found

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Speaker 1: out he had been embezzling a little bit himself, and

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Speaker 1: well he lost it all when he sent it to Nigeria. Right, Yeah, this'

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Speaker 1: it's it's one of those things that just um it's

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Speaker 1: it's just evil, evil scheme that that has taken lots

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Speaker 1: of money from people who were a little naive and

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Speaker 1: a little greedy and way too trusting, so less than one.

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Speaker 1: Don't trust everything you see on the internet. Um, that's

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Speaker 1: that's probably the best thing to keep in mind while

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Speaker 1: we're talking about all these fishing schemes. You know, like

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Speaker 1: the old thing goes, if it seems too good to

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Speaker 1: be true, it probably is. Yeah, definitely, But um I

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Speaker 1: always one of the one of the sort of asides

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Speaker 1: for this part of the h our discussion is, um

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Speaker 1: the people that have started counter scamming the scammers, which

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Speaker 1: just tickles me. No end there there. You can do

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Speaker 1: a quick search on the internet and you can find

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Speaker 1: people who are uh they respond to these scammers and

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Speaker 1: they'll say, well, sure, you know, I'm happy to help

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Speaker 1: you out, but first I need this from you, and

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Speaker 1: they'll make them do these elaborate things. I saw somebody

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Speaker 1: who made them carve a commodore sixty four out of

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Speaker 1: wood and send it to them, and they showed pictures

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Speaker 1: of it and it was amazing, right, So the people

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Speaker 1: on the other end of the scam can sometimes be

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Speaker 1: just as naive as the people they're trying to to

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Speaker 1: lure into the trap and to get back into the

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Speaker 1: fishing thing. The Nigerian scam, the way it's evolved is

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Speaker 1: is instead of asking for money, they'll ask for things

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Speaker 1: like your social Security number or your bank account number.

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Speaker 1: And then once they have that in for nation, that's

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Speaker 1: when you're really in trouble because not only will the

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Speaker 1: siphon out all the money in your account, but they

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Speaker 1: might also make you a a victim of identity theft. Um.

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Speaker 1: That's the that's the main goal for probably most of

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Speaker 1: the phishing schemes online, I would say is is some

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Speaker 1: form of identity theft, usually some sort of credit card

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Speaker 1: fraud or um or just outright theft of whatever's in

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Speaker 1: your bank account. I use a m I use a

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Speaker 1: web mail uh, pretty standard, well known web mail service

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Speaker 1: for my main email account. If you look at the

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Speaker 1: spam folder, it's pretty obvious that these things are scams

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Speaker 1: because I honestly, every time I look at the spam

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Speaker 1: folder and then it'll be a full folder. You'll see

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Speaker 1: probably about a third of those have similar or the

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Speaker 1: same exact uh subject headings. Um, and they'll all be

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Speaker 1: you know, please or help me with my problem or

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Speaker 1: you know, bless you you have uh, you have the

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Speaker 1: way to help my you know, situation out and you're

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Speaker 1: don't looking at your going okay, obviously there's something going

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Speaker 1: on here. And you know, bank accounts, they'll say, you know,

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Speaker 1: I'll get letters from banks that I never have had

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Speaker 1: an account with saying you must update your account information

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Speaker 1: as soon as possible otherwise, you know, or PayPal, you know,

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Speaker 1: And I'm going, yeah, no, I know, you're not real

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Speaker 1: That thing is they've gotten really sophisticated. They're getting a

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Speaker 1: lot better but fewer spelling mistakes and things and including

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Speaker 1: your name and things that might have clued you in before.

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Speaker 1: Are they're yeah, they're fine. They're starting to starting to

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Speaker 1: close those holes that that were that were in the

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Speaker 1: their approaches before. Um. You mentioned the bank thing. That's

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Speaker 1: actually a very good point. Uh. That's another one that

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Speaker 1: plays on not so much a negative personality trade, but

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Speaker 1: it plays on a person's fear. Yeah, you know, because

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Speaker 1: if you get a message that's from your bank account

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Speaker 1: or your your bank and it says, uh that there's

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Speaker 1: a problem with your account. Obviously you're going to immediately

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Speaker 1: want to try and address this problem. And um, the

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Speaker 1: there's a kind of a sister technique to fishing called

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Speaker 1: farming also with a pH which uh spoof's a website.

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Speaker 1: The goal here is to create a website that looks

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Speaker 1: identical to a real, um, respectable, legitimate website, so a

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Speaker 1: bank will say that's a good example. Um, but the

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Speaker 1: goal is not to let you access your account, but

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Speaker 1: rather to collect user names and passwords. And uh, it's

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Speaker 1: the same sort of end goal as phishing. It's it's

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Speaker 1: collecting all this information and then just stealing everything you

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Speaker 1: can possibly steal. Um, these are these are kind of

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Speaker 1: scary things. I mean, that's really and anyone can fall

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Speaker 1: victim to it. Uh. It's very easy to read one

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Speaker 1: of these emails and get emotionally involved and act before

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Speaker 1: you can really think things through. Yeah, and there's them.

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Speaker 1: There's some ways that you can kind of tell that

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Speaker 1: these these fights are real or not. You should always

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Speaker 1: look when somebody tries to get you to go to

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Speaker 1: one of these sites, take a look at the u

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Speaker 1: R l UM and that's that's gonna be one of

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Speaker 1: the first clues because a lot of the fishing UH

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Speaker 1: emails that you'll see, we'll ask you to click on

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Speaker 1: this link and if you mouse over it, you know,

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Speaker 1: just hold your mouse cursor there and look at the

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Speaker 1: the location for the site. A lot of times you'll

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Speaker 1: see that it doesn't even have the name of the

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Speaker 1: site that you're supposed to go to in it, So, um,

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Speaker 1: that's a pretty good clue right there. Or they'll it'll

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Speaker 1: be the name hyphen something else and you'll go, Okay,

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Speaker 1: this seems a little odd. You want to see if

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Speaker 1: the website has security that usually you can tell that

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Speaker 1: by either looking for the little lock icon or the

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Speaker 1: h T t P s in the u r L.

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Speaker 1: Keep in mind that both of those can be faked. Um.

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Speaker 1: You can even create a fake website that has a

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Speaker 1: fake u r L that looks just like the real one. Um.

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Speaker 1: There's a nasty, nasty attack called it donain domain name

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Speaker 1: server poisoning where you can um spoof the whole thing,

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Speaker 1: and that that's probably the scariest of all of them,

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Speaker 1: because in most of these cases, a good point of

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Speaker 1: advice is instead of clicking on a link to take

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Speaker 1: you to whichever site you need to go to, like

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Speaker 1: let's say Amazon or PayPal. UM, you type the address

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Speaker 1: in instead and that way you don't have to worry

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Speaker 1: about a link redirecting you to another site. However, with

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Speaker 1: the d NS poisoning, it is possible to full computers

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Speaker 1: so that even if you were to type the address

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Speaker 1: and you will go to the farming site instead of

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Speaker 1: the real site. UM. Not very widespread, but it is possible.

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Speaker 1: This is one of those major major uh uh security

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Speaker 1: leaks that came out over the to the year two

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Speaker 1: thousand eight UM. Unfortunately, right now it hasn't become a

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Speaker 1: major problem. It's just the potential for disaster. So um. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: the fishing and farming, these are these are things that

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Speaker 1: you definitely need to look out for. And there's some

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Speaker 1: other general rules. If you ever get a message from

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Speaker 1: your browser saying that the certificate it's asking for does

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Speaker 1: not match the u r L, that is a huge

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Speaker 1: warning that you should never agree to accept a certificate.

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Speaker 1: If it's gives you that message, that's pretty good indication

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Speaker 1: that you are you're in a farm farmed site, that's true,

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Speaker 1: and you can It will usually tell you specifically what

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Speaker 1: that u r L is. And if you look at

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Speaker 1: that and that pop up window that you'll get, you're

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Speaker 1: gonna see that the u r L doesn't necessarily match.

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Speaker 1: And in some cases it will make sense to you, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, there are some legitimate cases where it might

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Speaker 1: be a little different. Um, but you should be able

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Speaker 1: to look at that and puzzle it out for yourself

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Speaker 1: and go that you know, does not make sense to

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Speaker 1: me that this would go to this u r L.

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Speaker 1: I don't think this is safe. And there are some

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Speaker 1: browser uh you know, the newer browsers have some phishing

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Speaker 1: anti phishing technology built into them. Yes, yeah, that's true.

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Speaker 1: And we should also go ahead and move on to

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Speaker 1: we were going to talk about some social networking sites

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Speaker 1: recently that have had some issues with uh, with phishing attacks. Now,

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Speaker 1: these are a little different, uh, and it's a it's

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Speaker 1: a step further away from any money. You know, you're

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Speaker 1: not you're not logging, you're not giving someone the information

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Speaker 1: to your bank. However, if someone fishes your information from

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Speaker 1: a social networking site, they may end up getting a

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Speaker 1: password that works for other websites. If you're the kind

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Speaker 1: of person who creates the one password and uses that

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Speaker 1: for everything. If you get tricked once, that means your

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Speaker 1: information is is vulnerable everywhere you go. UM. So that's

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Speaker 1: one of the good reasons to make sure you use

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Speaker 1: different passwords for different websites, which is a pain. I

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Speaker 1: know it's a pain, especially if you have a lot

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Speaker 1: of websites you go to. That's really important to do

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Speaker 1: if you want to remain safe online. That's true. And

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Speaker 1: there are some pretty sophisticated UM password storage sites that

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Speaker 1: are available now UM and UH. Some of them will

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Speaker 1: help you manage your your logins. They'll plug in, they'll

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Speaker 1: offer a plug in for things like Firefox browsers like Firefox,

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Speaker 1: you can plug it in and it will when you

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Speaker 1: go to a site. It will allow you to store

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Speaker 1: UM passwords. And some of them will even allow you

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Speaker 1: to generate uh new passwords, so it'll be you know,

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Speaker 1: you you can generate something with lots of different upper

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Speaker 1: and lower case characters and numeric things and and basically

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Speaker 1: help you to come up with something really tricky UM

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Speaker 1: and you won't necessarily have to remember it because the

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Speaker 1: plug in has it stored for you. Right and UH.

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Speaker 1: Going back to social the social media stuff, UM, Facebook

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Speaker 1: and Twitter both have had some problems with phishing attacks recently,

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Speaker 1: and recently I mean the end of two thousand and

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Speaker 1: eight and beginning of two thousand nine. Um. Facebook, Actually

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Speaker 1: one of my friends on Facebook was victim to this. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He he was suddenly sending out all these messages to

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Speaker 1: people saying, Hey, you know, you look really funny in

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Speaker 1: this video. I can't believe you did this, blah blah blah.

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Speaker 1: And then there's a link, and the link takes you

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Speaker 1: to a site that looks like a video site, and

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Speaker 1: it tells you, Hey, you know what, you need this

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Speaker 1: plug in in order to play the video. Click here.

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Speaker 1: And if you were to click there, you would immediately

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Speaker 1: download some malware onto your computer. And so uh, in

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Speaker 1: this case, it's not necessarily to steal your information, but

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Speaker 1: it was a malware delivery system which could theoretically also

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Speaker 1: helps steal your information. It could be a key logger,

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Speaker 1: it could be a trojan, ums, all sorts of things,

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Speaker 1: nasty things that could happen to you by following these links.

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Speaker 1: So we did let him know that his account was compromised,

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Speaker 1: and um he ran some software and he changed his

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Speaker 1: past words and things seem to be okay with his

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Speaker 1: account now, but I've seen that happen two or three

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Speaker 1: other times with other people. And the pernicious thing is

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Speaker 1: on Facebook if you haven't used Facebook before, if you're

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Speaker 1: posting something to somebody else's what they call the wall, right, Um,

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Speaker 1: you have to be a friend of that person is

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Speaker 1: in order to do that. So there's already that that

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Speaker 1: aura of trust going on. You say, well, this must

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Speaker 1: be legitimate, you know, And and even though there may

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Speaker 1: be spelling errors or the grammar they use may not

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Speaker 1: be the same way that this person would normally write

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Speaker 1: to you, you might say, well, you know, obviously it's

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Speaker 1: not somebody else because they're writing on my wall, so

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Speaker 1: it must be legitimate. Well, that's the thing is those

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Speaker 1: people are falling prey to the fishing attack, and then

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Speaker 1: other people fall prey to it, and that's social engineering,

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Speaker 1: right Yeah. Twitter was very much the same way. Um,

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Speaker 1: a few Twitter accounts were compromised and in a way

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Speaker 1: that as of the recording of this podcast, we're just

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Speaker 1: not sure exactly how the the initial uh takeover happened.

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Speaker 1: But after that, direct messages started going between Twitter users

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Speaker 1: and and and just like in Facebook, to send a

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Speaker 1: direct message, and Twitter you have to follow the person

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Speaker 1: you're sending the message to and they have to follow

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Speaker 1: you back. It can't just be a one way street.

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Speaker 1: It has to be you know, mutual following. Then you

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Speaker 1: can send a direct message, which is a private message.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't go on the public Twitter broadcast. And these

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Speaker 1: private messages said things like, oh, you won't believe what

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Speaker 1: this person said about you in this blog, and you know,

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Speaker 1: being the kind of vain people we are, we Twitter users,

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Speaker 1: I include myself in that. Yeah, but in particular people

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Speaker 1: who use Facebook and Twitter. There there's a few studies

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Speaker 1: that suggests that such users have a little bit of

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Speaker 1: a narcissistic tendency. Um well, you feel inclined to click

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Speaker 1: on this, and of course that ends up delivering malware

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Speaker 1: to your computer. So um yeah, these are We're probably

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Speaker 1: gonna see a lot more of these, especially as people,

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Speaker 1: you know, think people who think it's funny. Like the

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Speaker 1: Twitter stuff. A lot of the things I saw were

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Speaker 1: just people messing with other people's Twitter accounts so that

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Speaker 1: they were making them say ridiculous and you know, scandalous

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Speaker 1: things and completely untrue things. But they weren't using it

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Speaker 1: to necessarily steal information. They were just making a nuisance

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Speaker 1: of themselves. We'll probably see more of that too. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: As a matter of fact, Um, there were several high

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Speaker 1: profile accounts that were hacked right on the heels of

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Speaker 1: that fishing scheme, like President elect Barack Obama and Britney

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Speaker 1: spring Spears Fox News, Rick Sancho said, Rick Sanchez from CNN,

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Speaker 1: I believe Rick Sanchez claimed according to his Twitter account

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Speaker 1: that he had taken some crack early in the morning

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Speaker 1: and was kind of flying high at the time. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that was not that was yeah, that was a bad one. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and patently, you know, completely untrue. Yeah, it was not

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Speaker 1: Rick Sanchez, it was whomever had taken over his account.

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Speaker 1: But apparently in that case, Twitter founder Biz Stone said

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Speaker 1: that there were some tools, administrative tools that had gotten

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Speaker 1: hacked into right that would allow someone to access passwords,

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Speaker 1: and there were thirty three accounts they haven't divulged at

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Speaker 1: this time at the time of us recording this who

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Speaker 1: all was hacked. But they were all famous people with

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Speaker 1: lots of lots of I mean, they were the obvious targets.

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Speaker 1: And um, yeah, this is uh, And so don't think

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Speaker 1: that President elect Obama saw Hey, see what this crazy

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Speaker 1: person said in the blog about you and then clicked

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Speaker 1: on it. That's not the case. In this case, he

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Speaker 1: was he was targeted specifically by the hackers. This wasn't

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Speaker 1: one of those things where Obama is just like I

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Speaker 1: wonder what this blogger did say about me. Um. So,

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Speaker 1: just to clear that up, I wanted to talk very

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Speaker 1: briefly about what you should do if you are the

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Speaker 1: victim of a phishing attack. Okay, so, there are a

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Speaker 1: few different websites you can report a phishing attack to.

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Speaker 1: One of them is the anti phishing dot org website,

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Speaker 1: and you can send an email to report phishing at

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Speaker 1: anti phishing dot org. Um. You can also send an

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Speaker 1: email to the Federal Trade Commission, which is UH that

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Speaker 1: the DEMAI address to send that too would be spam

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Speaker 1: at u CE dot gov. And you would probably want

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Speaker 1: to file a complaint with the FBI UH at their

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Speaker 1: Internet Crime Complaints Center which is at www dot i

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Speaker 1: C three dot gov. And it's important to let these

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Speaker 1: these organizations know so that they can let everyone else

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Speaker 1: know and investigate. Meanwhile, you should also immediately contact the

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Speaker 1: three big credit bureaus so experience Equifax and TransUnion and

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Speaker 1: get ahold of your credit report, take a look at it,

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Speaker 1: see if there's anything strange on their report the fraud

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Speaker 1: to them. UM, if you have evidence of fraud, you

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Speaker 1: should use that so that you can get the fraud

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Speaker 1: alert extended over the maximum amount of time, because standard

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Speaker 1: time for a fraud alert is ninety days, and the

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Speaker 1: problem with that is someone could still be using your

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Speaker 1: information after those ninety days and you'd really be stuck.

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Speaker 1: So if you have proof of fraud, you can get

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Speaker 1: that extended up to I think seven years, UM, which

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Speaker 1: you know it sounds kind of crazy, but you know

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Speaker 1: we're talking about your information that can affect your credit rating,

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Speaker 1: whether or not you can buy a house, whether or

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Speaker 1: not you get a job. I mean, this is important stuff. UM.

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Speaker 1: And also report the crime to local law enforcement. Uh,

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Speaker 1: if it happened, you know, if it happened while you

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Speaker 1: were at home, of course, that's you know, you report

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Speaker 1: to that local law enforcement. If you're on vacation, whatever,

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Speaker 1: you report to them, um, just to let them know

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Speaker 1: what had happened. That kind of covers all the bases.

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Speaker 1: You may have to sign some AFFI David's to make

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Speaker 1: sure that you know you're what you're saying. You're you

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Speaker 1: will stand up in court and defend and say this

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Speaker 1: is exactly what happened. But that's a small price to

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Speaker 1: pay considering. Yeah, I think so. And uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: this is as Jonathan said, this is not something that

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Speaker 1: you want to take lightly. Just use your common sense. UM,

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Speaker 1: avoid clicking on links that that don't appear to be correct. UM,

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Speaker 1: go directly to the source if you can to define it. UM.

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Speaker 1: Use the latest web browsers to uh that incorporate the

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Speaker 1: anti fishing technology. UM. All these things will help you

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Speaker 1: help you avoid being sucked in. And uh, it's amazing

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Speaker 1: to me how many of these deep sea analogies we have.

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Speaker 1: Now we've talked about trolling and fishing. So yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: so don't be a prawn. You know what else? Nice?

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Speaker 1: Nice piracy? Right, So we've got a whole seafaring thing. Guy. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: well I think that about wraps it up for this discussion,

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Speaker 1: don't you. Yeah. Excellent. If you want to learn more

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Speaker 1: about some of the things we've talked about, we've got

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Speaker 1: articles on online crime, we have articles on uh safe

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Speaker 1: web browsing. You can fishing fishing, both the PHM and

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Speaker 1: f I believe you can find out all about that

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Speaker 1: at how stuff works dot com right now, and we'll

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Speaker 1: talk to you again really soon. We're more on this

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Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics because it how stuff works

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Speaker 1: dot com. Let us know what you think. Send an

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Speaker 1: email to podcast at how stuff works dot com. Brought

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Speaker 1: to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready,

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Speaker 1: are you