During the first few days of National Cyber Security Awareness Month, thousands of Hotmail, Gmail, and Yahoo email accounts have been compromised as a result of Phishing schemes. In simple terms, people end up entering their usernames and passwords on a site that looks like where they want to be, but actually it’s an imposter site which then steals their information. They probably followed a link in an email, or entered their login information on a page that looked like their email login page, but actually wasn’t.

In general, the two most important rules to avoid becoming a victim of Phishing are:

• Don’t click links in your emails (always type them yourself)

• Always verify your URL before you provide any information

A while back we wrote a blog article about how Mitto Protects Users Against Phishing and Identity Theft. For those of you who haven’t read it, now may be a good time to check it out to see how using Mitto can make going online safer.