Phishing occurs when an identity thief lures you through a phony email that purports to be from a legitimate company to a bogus website that looks like the website of the legitimate company that the scammers pretend to be.  The website requries you to provide personal financial informaiton to verify your account.  This information innocently provided is used to make the person providing it a victim of identity theft.  One of the latest phishing scams now going on involves a phony email purporting to be from the Better Business Bureau that reads: “Dear Business Owner, we have obtained several complaints via the Better Buseinss Bureau online complaint center concerning several unauthorized transactions from a number of private bank accounts to your corporate account.   You can view the complaints in our online complaint center using the following link:”  A phony link is supplied in the email.  Clicking on the link can lead to you becoming a victim of identity theft.

TIP

Always beware when an email is addressed to you as “business owner” without your exact name.  Never click on a link when you are not absolutely sure the source of the email.  It can lead to identity theft or the downloading of a keystroke logging malware program that can read everything in your computer and provide this information to the scam artist.  When in doubt, call the real legitimate organization at a phone number that you know is correct to identify if the email is legitimate.