How many of you readers love spending your leisure time by catching fish in serene atmosphere ? I am sure , most of you cherish the dream of such beautiful holidaying in your ancestral homes /villages with lots of water around. Well, I do... And what do we do then? Just sit quietly on the bank of the river/ pond with the fishing rod, thinking all sorts of thoughts and suddenly the pull in the string…….. yeeeeeee you got the game of the day.
But then imagine when you are the FISH who just gulped the trap … yup………... this happens often in the cyber space. I dedicate this blog to those who have become victims of such crimes which is called “PHISHING”. What is “Phishing? When for the first time my English Professor mother came across this spelling, she was very surprised. She asked me straight away…….... is this the way you write English? Well, I am not born as an “English speaking individual”, but I have learnt it along with couple of other languages and I know “Phishing” is a word which will make every educated individual of my mother’s age, stare blankly at me and ask the same question. Yes, Phishing is a newly coined word which was born in the 1996 ( ref: Stroik& Huang(2008), Nature & Distribution of Phishing, published in Crimes of the Internet ( edited by Schmalleger & Pittaro, Prentice Hall publication) for the cyber generation . The word actually means “…criminals’ creation and use of emails and websites –designed to look like emails and websites of well known legitimate business , financial institutions…in order to deceive the internet users in order to disclose their bank and financial account information or their personal data such as usernames and passwords…”( the information was provided by US department of justice, (USDOJ 2004). But then, I am wrong in saying *only* “older generation”. Many of our generation also do not know how they are being “fish out of pond”. Well, I do not blame men and women who are oblivion of this fact. This is a hard truth that some brilliant tricksters have taken to internet to gain money in this easiest possible way by duping innocent people. The more shocking news is, many believe these sorts of mails as genuine and give in.
