Baie-Comeau >Electronics

Are you a Baie-Comeau Phish phan, well I am, so I was very disappointing to find that pharming has nothing to do with the band.  Even worse, when I clicked on the link, it directed me to a site that took all of my, uh let's say munchies moneys.  What a buzz kill.

Pharming refers to the redirection of an individual to an illegitimate web site through technical means. For example, an Internet banking customer, who routinely logs into his online banking web site, may be redirected to an illegitimate site instead of accessing his or her bank’s web site. Pharming can occur in four different ways:  

• Static domain name spoofing - the “pharmer” (the person or entity committing the fraud) attempts to take advantage of slight misspellings in domain names to trick users into visiting the illegitimate web site. For example, a pharmer may redirect a user to anybnk.com instead of anybank.com.
• Malicious software (Malware) - viruses on a consumer’s personal computer may intercept the request to visit a particular site, such as anybank.com, and redirect the user to the site that the pharmer has set up.
• Domain hijacking - hackers may steal or hijack a company’s legitimate web site, allowing them to redirect all legitimate Internet traffic to an illegitimate site.
• Domain Name Server (DNS) poisoning - local DNS servers can be “poisoned” to send users to a web site other than the one that was requested. This poisoning can occur as a result of misconfiguration, network vulnerabilities or Malware installed on the server.

If you have received a spoofed e-mail message or believe that you have been a victim of pharming, please take the following steps:

• Forward the e-mail to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) at spam@uce.gov.
• Forward the e-mail to the company that is being spoofed.
• File a complaint with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3).

You may also wish to view information about identity theft or e-mail scams and spam.