It was an email about Russ’s eBay account, so naturally he opened it.

He discovered that some of his account data wasn’t accurate and needed updating. He clicked on the link to the eBay site and entered his user ID and password…so far, so good. But it was the next page that as he puts it, “blew me away.” It requested extensive personal information. Realizing something was wrong, he contacted eBay and learned this was a phishing attempt to get his info. He immediately changed his user ID and password.

What made this effort different, according to Russ, was how professional it looked. The pages were correctly formatted, everything lined up. Russ had seen phishing attempts before and always recognized them as a scam. The phishing attempts look real, but remember, companies rarely, if ever, ask for sensitive information through e-mail links.