The internet is a great place for slaughtering the English language (I’m looking at you, Flickr!) and it is in this context that we’re going to talk about “phishing”. The term was coined in the mid 1990’s to refer to the creating of phony sites that look like legitimate sites in order to steal passwords and/or dump viruses on the victim’s machine. A typical “phishing trip” would start with a criminal “phisher” copying the look and feel of a large, well-known site – e.g. eBay, Amazon.com, Trademe – to wrap a website that exists solely to steal and wreck havoc.

For example, as a victim, you may receive an email purporting to be from the site in question (e.g. your bank). The email will claim something like your account has been compromised and that you should click on the link to confirm your details. Doing so will take you to a site that looks like your bank, but when you enter your username and password, they are “caught” by the phisher who now, literally, owns your account.

So, how do you avoid falling into the net of a phisher? For starters, don’t open emails you don’t recognise. Secondly, don’t click on links that appear in emails purporting to “confirm your account details”. No legitimate site will ask you to do this, and even if they did, the best way to do this is to manually open your internet browser and physically type in the address of the site in question. Finally, look for the alerts that come in modern browsers for phishing attacks – i.e. the address bar going red, or an alert coming up warning you about the site.

Phishing is a totally illegal way of getting your information – always remain cautious and keep your guard up! If in doubt, don’t click!

It is almost guaranteed that if you have an email address, you have received more than a few junk email messages – a.k.a spam. According to the Computer Encyclopaedia: “the term was supposedly coined from a Monty Python comedy sketch in the early 1970s in which every item on a restaurant menu contained SPAM, and there was nothing a customer could do to get a meal without it.”

However it received its name, spam is generally considered one of the great plagues of the internet. It comes in all shapes and sizes – from offers for cheap medicine to sexually explicit content to people from Nigeria offering money – to everything in between. Spam also ranges from totally harmless, but annoying, to exceedingly dangerous if handled in the wrong manner.

There really is only one golden rule when it comes to unsolicited email – “delete first, ask questions later”. If you want to be totally safe, don’t open any email you don’t recognise. Even if you do recognise who it is from, tread carefully if you weren’t expecting an attachment – and make sure your virus scanner is up to date before opening it. This is how many viruses nowadays spread around.

One of the best ways to control the amount of spam you use is to have a separate email address specifically for spam. Sign up for a free one through Gmail or Hotmail and give that email address out when entering into sites that require one. That way, your personal/work email address is kept away from the prying eyes of the internet, and your spam load should dramatically decrease.

The battle lines have been drawn, but good is prevailing as spam seems to be decreasing. Remember: they only keep sending because some people keep reading! Remove the demand – delete first, ask questions later.