You have likely seen variations of "phishing" fraud online, whether you realized it or not.

These are emails sent out which appear to be coming from online services such as Paypal or a credit card company. They usually have some heading telling you that you need to confirm your account or it will be closed.

Upon clicking the link, you are brought to web site that looks identical to the real web site. The only problem is, it is a clone web page set up for only one purpose, to capture your login information and password.

This information is then sent via email to some free email account like hotmail or yahoo, where they are collected and then used for fraud purposes.

Here is an example of one phishing email scam that is still floating around:

Increased Sophistication

Up until recently, I found it fairly simple to spot these email scams but I noticed that they are increasingly getting better.

The latest one is sure to catch quite a few people who use eBay.

The email sends a notification that their latest auction has ended with no bidders. It then offers a link to relist the item on eBay.

It is very, very good. What catches you off guard is the fact that you expect to see an email now and then like this if you are doing business on eBay. Unlike an email such as "Your account is about to be deactivated!", the relist your auction email seems pretty innocent. Simply log in to relist the item...

As you can probably guess, the link is a fraud. It brings you to an exact duplicate of the actual eBay login screen:

Once you've "logged in", your account has now been compromised. The scammers can use your account to list high ticket items and receive payment for them. Of course, there is no $2,000 laptop or video camera. They simply collect the money and run.

What can you do?

• Never, ever click on a link in the email to get to a login page. Type in the web site address yourself
• Report the fraud to ebay by contacting them here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_inline/
• If it is a paypal fraud, send a FULL copy of the email to spoof@paypal.com. They need to have the header information in the email as well to help track things down

To see an ongoing list of the current phishing scams, here is the link:

http://www.scamsafe.com/scamsafe/2004/06/phishing_scams__6.html

You need to be careful about emails which are asking you to click through to log into any account. With the level of sophistication of some of these scams it is getting harder to tell the real ones from the frauds.