Pharming for Information

Just when your thought your were secure with the phishing attacks come the pharming attacks.

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Posted by Hello™

Now there is a new concern for all of us using the Internet for conducting business and personal use that is more severe than the email phishing scams. Pharming is the new scam that is starting to show up and users unfortunately have little control on this new crime that is coming upon us.

Pharming is occurring at the DNS server level. How this works is, the DNS servers or "domain name servers" are located all over the world and essentially store a url address to direct a person using a browser to the website. In this latest scam the scammer infiltrates the DNS server and redirects the person to a different location for the website being typed in the browser. The website that may be displayed is a bogus site that for all intensive purposes, looks like the real thing. Then a person typing login information at this bogus site can have their information stolen and be recorded for future criminal activity in the form of identity theft or other types of online stealing and offline crimes.

Ways of fighting this war needs to occur at the server side of the equation. Sites that need to have a login or private information shared should incorporate a SSL, Secure Sockets Layer and a digital security certificate to verify to the user that the website is the real thing. Unfortunately this is still not being done at many of the largest financial institutions. In fact some of these institutions do not use a secure login at all.

To check if your institution has a secure login, a small lock appears in the locked position on the bottom corner of the browser page. This represents that the information that is typed on that page is shielded from others on the Internet. Click here for an example of a secure Login

OK, What can you do to stop this crime?

Start with your bank and credit card companies and insist that they develop secure logins. Verify and insist that your private information on every site requesting confidential info remains private and is not shared with any outside sources. This can be tricky because some so called privacy policies are not actually privacy policies at all but a legal document allowing them to share and exchange info with others.

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