There was a big Hotmail scandal going on last week: around 10,000 passwords were obtained by hackers who created a fake website identical to Hotmail’s to fool users into entering their email address and password in a “phishing” scam.
That’s all “phishing” is: a scam that uses false websites to lure people into revealing important data such as bank account details, login names or passwords, and usually the link to the false website comes in a “formal” email or from one of your friends whose account has been successfully hijacked.
It’s not hard to avoid “phishing”.
The first thing you should do is to avoid clicking on links within emails. If the email appears to come from a website you use often, simply open up a new browser window and type the web address — it shouldn’t take you more than a few keystrokes before your browser remembers the address.
Another thing you can do is to ask your browser to “remember the username” for all the important websites you visit. Use is as a reminder for checking the web address when your username doesn’t show up on the website.
Google PageRank or Alexa website ranking software are also good indicators for “phishing” websites. Obviously, the fake websites won’t rank nearly as high as the real ones.
Lastly, please don’t be so curious about who blocked or deleted you from their contact list. There are plenty of others who are actually more than happy to hear from you. Why bother with those who are trying to avoid you?