Yesterday, we warned you about the nearly 10,000 passwords that were stolen and posted online by cybercriminals. Further information indicates that these passwords were stolen via a fake Hotmail website, identical to the real thing. This phishing scam tricked users into entering their email address and password. Twenty-four hours later a similar list of thousands of Google Gmail, AOL, Yahoo Mail, Comcast and Earthlink accounts were revealed as well.
Scams like these are becoming more and more common. As PC and internet users we have just a few choices. We can avoid using the internet completely (not likely) or arm ourselves with the right tools to prevent malware attacks, spyware trickery, phishing scams, etc. In the case of the Hotmail passwords, a simple anti-virus or spyware program would NOT have prevented the crime. No software was installed and these programs would not have sent up any flares to warn us of the potential danger. That’s why we need a program like My Web of Trust (WOT).
WOT is s a FREE Internet security add-on for your browser (Firefox and Internet Explorer). It will keep you safe from online scams, identity theft, spyware, spam, viruses and unreliable shopping sites. WOT warns you before you interact with a risky website. The WOT add-on investigates the links you see on your web browser and checks their trustworthiness, vendor liability, privacy and child safety. With the sum of all these, WOT assigns a rating of green (trustworthy), yellow (proceed with caution) or red (warning). The rating is indicated by a tiny, color-coded icon that is displayed next to each of the links in your browser.
WOT uses both the users’ ratings and the trusted lists, such as phishing website links to assign ratings. This user-based rating system is what really gives strength to the Web of Trust. With over 5 million users and ratings for over 24 million websites, WOT serves as an exceptional second-layer of security for your web browsing experience.
In addition to the ratings posted within the most trusted sites on the web (Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, Wikipedia, digg, …), WOT also warns you about dangerous links in Gmail, Windows Live Hotmail, and Yahoo! Mail. Had the users affected by the Hotmail password scam yesterday been running WOT, they would have been greeted with two warnings and would not have unknowingly provided their email address and passwords.
1) A red WOT rating icon would have been displayed
Notice the red circle, indicating an untrustworthy site
2) If the user did click on the link, they would have been warned again, with this full screen image
WOT Full Screen Warning
Get WOT today and add a new level of security to your web browsing experience. Visit http://www.mywot.com for more information and download links. Remember, it is FREE. What do you have to lose?
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Tags: Add-on, Hotmail, My Web of Trust, Passwords, Phishing, WOT
