Over the last couple of days, I have received an email from "Bank of America" and "Wachovia". These messages were addressed to one of the accounts that I use for this site. This email address gets a lot of spam and I would never associate it with a bank account, so right away I knew something was "phishy". Now you might not be so lucky and actually recieve a message like this addressed to an account you actually would use for this purpose.

There are couple basic precautions you can take when looking at email messages and any websites the messages use.

First: If you are using Outlook Express, from the view menu item, make sure that status bar is checked. The status bar is the solid bar at the bottom of the email that will show you where a link is actually taking you.

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Second: Make sure your brower has the address bar open, this is where the website name is displayed.

Third: When in doubt, contact the institution in question using information from a phone book or any other source outside of the email in question.

So, I started looking at these messages, I noticed that when I moused over the links, the addresses of the websites were not either a Bank of America address or a Wachovia accress (You can see it on the status bar at the bottom of the email image). A good thing to remember is that business do not normally send out an email that uses an IP address( an address like http://213.123.23.22) instead of a name like "www.bankofamerica.com". So if you see an IP address in the status bar, big red flag, you should probably not follow the link.

Bank of America Phishing Email

Wachovia Phishing Email

Here is Firefox 2.0 telling me that these sites might be a fake and asking me if I really want to go there. I would not rely to heavily on any single protective measure. You should also look at the address in the address bar to make sure it looks right to you. If it doesn't, don't use the page, remember, they are asking for your information.

Bank of America Phishing Site

Wachovia Phishing Site

Always remember that this is your information and if you have any concerns about the web site, don't use and contact the institution in question to make sure everything is kosher.