Identity Fraud Pharming
One method of identity fraud is called ‘pharming’ and is a rather sophisticated form of identity fraud and theft. Pharming can be best described as a hacker who secretly directs a computer from a real financial site to the hacker’s fake one. This method creates financial websites such as banking websites and sites like PayPal that are strikingly similar and when an unsuspecting person is at the hackers fake site, they input their personal information, banking/financial information and passwords and thusly give it to the hacker.
These hackers are so sophisticated that the website addresses look very similar to the actual domain names of the real financial websites – often only one or two letters are out of place or replaced, such as replacing an M with an N and so on – the key to the hacker’s abilities to pharm information this way is to be discreet, and in most cases, they are so discreet that you would never be able to tell unless you were really looking. Hackers can re-route thousands to tens of thousands of users at a time with just a bit of malicious code imbedded.
Pharming happens in two different ways most typically. The hacker could infect your computer with a virus that you wouldn’t dream of knowing about and then your computer would send you to the fake web address instead of the real one – the hacker then steals the personal information that you input into the site.
The second way is having a hacker get into the domain name system (DNS) servers that are the framework for computers to communicate with each other on the World Wide Web. This is sneaky because the hacker redirects your computer to his website even when you input the URL of the original website yourself.
Avoid being pharmed
There are several steps you can take to help avoid being pharmed, however it should also be said that it is very difficult to detect when you’ve been hijacked. The website and the URL of the hacker’s fake website may appear to be completely normal. There are a few steps you can follow to help avoid pharming:
- When you are at a financial website, or any website where you need to input personal information, look for the signs that the site is secured – a lock icon on the status bar of your browser or a URL that starts with https instead of http. Not all websites use this security feature, so you may want to double check and reconsider if they do not.
- Many websites also use another layer of authentication called a certificate authority. The certificate will appear as a padlock icon that will ask you if you want to trust the site. Double check that the certificate is valid, and then you can be sure you are at a trusted site.
- Many financial websites use callbacks or email to verify that you are entering personal information to their website.
- Websites also have an IP address as well as their domain name. You can find the IP address for any domain name at Networksolutions and go to the WHOIS tab, type in the domain name you want and find the IP address. This will also ensure that you are getting the right website.
- Keep updated anti-virus and anti-spyware on your computer as well as firewalls and filters.
- Keep your software updated.
- Watch your bank account and credit card statements and review them as soon as you get them.
By following these simple strategies, you can lessen the likelihood of being hacked and having your information pharmed.
