How to Detect and Prevent Phishing Attack [Safety Tip]

Phishing is a dangerous attack which is used by cyber criminals to steal the login credentials of users. This attack is widely used for Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo and bank account hacking. If we take a look on recent cyber attacks, this has most share in the graph.

Daily thousands of users fall in Phishing attack and loose their account. Although, all popular websites have given easy ways to recover account, still being prepared before is good thing.

What is Phishing?

Phishing is a kind of attack, in which attacker tries to steal login details of innocent users with the help of fake login page. Most of the simple phishing involves duplicate login page of original website. But complicated phishing attacks are hard to identify.

These are few things which you should do to detect and prevent your self from Phishing 

• This is the most important thing to note that never give your password anywhere except the login page of the website. If any page is asking for the password, you should not enter your password. No service or third party website is allowed to use your password. For Ex: A webpage is claiming to show Facebook profile visitors but reqiores your email and password for this, it is the phishing attack and leave this page now.
• Always check the URL of login page and be sure you are at the right place. For most of the website, direct type URL in the address bar instead of clicking on links. If the URL is looking strange, then leave the webpage. Some attacker use similar URL  to fool the victims. Ex: they use www.facebo0k.com, www.fatebook.com or www.facebook.co.nr which looks similar but is not original.
• Never believe on the links text. Sometimes link malicious links shows something else but go to somewhere else. Click on the link given in example and see the website. 
  Ex: http://hackingtricks.in
  You will see some other website while you have clicked on hackingtricks.in
• Never click on links, open or download files in the emails sent from unknown sender. Only click on links in the email from trusted sender.
• Never buy software or digital goods from unknown website. If you came on a new website with good offers, first of all try to know about the website and see the review on the web. If the website is stranger for everyone, avoid it.
• If you are paying online, always check the URL before entering your credit card details. If the payment gateway is unknown then leave the website at once. 
• Use latest antivirus program which also provide internet security. Most of the internet security blocks the websites that have malicious behavior or phishing.

These are some tips which you can follow to prevent your account from phishers. Internet is not secure so you need to take care of your accounts. Your online accounts' hacking can cause a big trouble for you. So try to be safe and follow the security guidelines. 

How to Create a Strong Password That is Easy To Remember

Creating a strong password for all your online account is the thing you must do. Not all online account are equally important, but online banking, business email and Facebook accounts are very important and must be protected from hackers.

Now days, Hacker always try to hack into innocent people's accounts. So we need to follow all the basic steps of security. The most basic thing to protect your account is to have a strong password. So try to create and use a strong password which is hard to guess or crack.

These are some basic rules which must be followed to make a strong password

• Password must contain a special characters such as @#$%^&
• It must be at least 6 characters long.
• Password must be the combination of Capital and small characters.
• Never choose an easy to guess word such as your phone number, your last name, nick name or mother's name.
• Never use same password for all your online accounts. This is to make sure that in the event that one account is hacked into, your other accounts will not be affected.
• Make password that is easy to use. Now its up to you how you want to make it easy.
• Follow this rule:
  
  1. Replace all the ‘a’ with @
  2. Replace all the ‘s’ with $
  3. Repalce any space with %
  4. Replace any ‘o’ with 0
  5. Replace any ‘i’ with !
   Suppose you want to have password, Password. Make it as P@ssw0rd. That is strong enough.
• Try to combine things into a single password. Combine your mother’s name and your phone number. It is more secure than using only number or name.
• You can also use some random password generation tool. But those passwords are often hard to remember.

Generating a strong password is the first step towards the security of your account and must be followed. Most of the accounts are hacked just because of weak passwords.

How to check for safe file before downloading

On the Internet we download many files a day. Some of these are safe but some are infected by virus or other malicious programs. Although we use Antivirus programs to protect our system, but it will be much better to scan a file before downloading on your system. If the download source is unknown or new, then you must check.


VIrusTotal is an online security website which can help you in this. This website scan download links Worth more than 40 different security tools to check whether the file is safe to download or infected.
To scan for a file, right click on the download link and select Copy link address.
Now open new tab in browser and write Virustotal.com and press enter. In the new website, paste the link in the text field and click Submit URL. VirusTotal will send the link to its engine which will check the link against several URL analysis tools to see if the site is black listed as a malicious site already. 
After few seconds, it will show you the scan result. If nothing is detected in the scan, you can proceed with the downloading.

Integrating it with FireFox: This security tool is also available as add-on for the FireFox which is called VTZilla. So you do not need to go to the website each time you want to check a link. After installing this tool in your FireFox, you will see a new toolbar from which you can see the status of the website. It also add an option in the right click menu. just right on the link you want to scan and you will find an option " select Scan with VirusTotal." This option will open the scan results in the new tab for the selected URL.


Although the security tool use more than 40 scanners to check the website but you can not blindly trust on it. There may be the new threat on the link which is not listed in all the scanners. So you should use a good antivirus and Internet security solution on your system.


If you are Google Chrome user, you do not need to go for this tool. Just update your web browser. Latest version of Google Chrome has this security service in-built which notifies user when they try to download files from malicious sources.

Add Web Of Trust in Google Chrome for safe web browsing

If you want to protect your web browsing from all those malicious websites which spreads malwares, add Web Of Trust extension in your Google Chrome. Web of Trust is an online service which provides a rating of website  powered by a global community of millions of trustworthy users who have rated millions of websites based on their experiences. This add-on shows the reputation of the website next to search results in Google, Yahoo and bing search results. It also protects you from the malicious shorten links and malicious links sent to you via email.
It also show WOT sign next to links posted on facebook. Thus it also protects you from malicious links and website on the internet.

• To install WOT on your Google Chrome, follow the link https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bhmmomiinigofkjcapegjjndpbikblnp
• Now click on Add To Chrome.
• After the installation complete, a new tab will open which allow you to choose the level of security. Select the basic level of security and click on Next.
• Then it will ask for registration. This is an optional process. Registering an account allows users to rate a website. To skip this process click on "Red x" button on the upper right corner.
• Now you will see the WOT icon in the omnibar near the wrench icon.

Now each time, you visit a website, it will change the color. Click on this icon to see its reputation in various catagories. If the color is green, it means the website is fine. The color yellow shows that the website is having some issues. But the website which shows red color are harmful and you should leave the website at once. 

It will also show the WOT icon next to search results in Yahoo, Google and Bing. This will help users to see the reputation of the link. Always ignore the poor reputation links.

This is a must have tool to protect yourself online. For those who easily caught into spams should try this once.