Yesterday in my Introduction to Computers class I introduced the topic of computer security. We talked about "phishing" which occurs when you get an email message purporting to come from, say PayPal, asking you to confirm your account details by "clicking here." My students are very computer savvy, many have Facebook pages (as do I, now), can crank out Excel spread sheets and Word docs, but were innocents when it came to phishing.
Pretty scary, since those who "phish" are getting more and more sophisticated. I almost fell for a Citibank phishing scheme-the message looked so real. Is it just human to want to believe that the message comes from Citibank? The Anti-Phishing Working Group describes phishing attacks as combining social engineering with technical subterfuge. I like that description.
Which leads to the next idea-human stupidity. Mother (and father!) always told me, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. Which is why I'm still surprised when folks fall for the e-mail scams like the one that is now being called the "Nigerian Fraud E-mail." The New Yorker article from last summer, "The Perfect Mark," describes how perfectly reasonable folks, folks like you and me, lost nearly everything (or in a few cases, everything) because they succumbed to the lure of "easy money."
Now if we could only figure out some way to protect ourselves from ourselves! Any ideas out there?
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