Yesterday I met one of my old schoolmate and we were talking about RapidShare. He subscribed the premium account for a year and he is currently using RapidShare to download all his TV series, musics and etc. He no longer uses Torrent because our Malaysian ISP has throttled the connection. Anyway, we also discussed on the “sharing” of premium accounts with multiple users… After that he told me that he lost his RapidShare Premium password once because he mistakenly keyed in the login and password in a fake RapidShare website.
Luckily he managed to get back his RapidShare Premium account after contacting the RS support. These fake websites that looks exactly the same as the original website is called phishing and is meant to capture or steal your login information. Most of the time you’ll receive an e-mail in your inbox that pretends to be from your bank, e-commerce vendor, or other on-line site. I can identify if an email is fake or real pretty well but maybe that is because I spend too much time and effort on computer. For those that would like to learn how to identify phishing and spam, please continue reading.
One of our forum member shan, shared with us a website that provides online phishing and spam IQ quiz. The first time I did the quiz and got 9 out of 10. A few weeks later, I did this quiz again and got a perfect 10 out of 10!
All you need to do is to click on the “Start the Test” button, and you’ll be presented with 10 questions. You can then decide if the screenshot of the email is legitimate, phishing or even select no answer if you’re unsure. When the quiz finish, you get to see how many you got it right and also WHY is your answer correct / wrong. There are software that can help us to identify phishing sites and fake emails but it is better if we can identify them ourselves.
Do give this phishing quiz a try and share with us what is your score.
[ Visit SonicWALL Phishing and Spam IQ Quiz ]
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One other thing. They instruct you to read url’s from the right, rather than the left to determine the real domain. This is not true. You look to the LEFT of the Top level domain (TLD — ie, .com, .org) to determine the real web address domain. You start at the far left, scan right, AND DON’T STOP LOOKING FOR THE TLD UNTIL YOU REACH THE / (SLASH) or the end of the line! So in the example given paypal.com was not the real website because it was NOT followed by a / slash, only a – (dash) paypal.com-verify…n.net/. You follow from left to right until you find the / slash. There can be no slash only if the TLD is the last thing in the address — (google.com)
You could follow from right to left but you’ll be looking for a year in many long Web addresses. Also, the right end of the line is usually not visible in the url bar or status bar.
I actually didn’t know it was possible to follow .com with anything in a domain the way this phisher did. I learned something new!
8/10 but because I was too suspicious fortunately. I disagree with the answers on 2 items. The UPS email was suspicious because the copyright and logo information was wrong. You can’t trademark the color brown. :) And they call it a brandmark rather than a trademark. Grammar slips and obvious foreign language mistakes are usually pretty big red flags. Just because there was no motivation for phishing in the email doesn’t mean there wasn’t one.
Second the email from E choice banking was unfair. Generally the first thing I do is check the header details. This test did not allow us to see the header and verify where the email was sent from. (I check the domain of the email address, ie, @wellsfargo.com. Second, even though there was no motivation for phishing the email was very unprofessional and also from an unheard of bank. The test does not explain whether I am supposed to have an account with said bank so I assumed I was not, (or they would have picked one of the big banks.) Always assume it’s crap if in doubt, I say.
I’m sticking to my answers because I wouldn’t have been a victim had they been real, and I’ll keep my good practices, thanks.
nice, really nice!
9/10 – got the 4th wrong
Fail…5/10…but this is just a test on screen…in the real world i would ring my bank etc…great site btw…just recently found you and have been mesmerized ever since.
guys, remember, this is just a test page. Even if you scored 10/10 you may not get a perfect score in the real world.
Hackers and phishers will adapt quickly and find new ways of phishings that we might not ever thought of – although many still work with their classic methods.
Still, this is a good way to build your fundamentals.
hehe got 9/10
thought the bank of choice one was a phishing site.
no name, weird sender name
9/10… got wrong on the last one… first try… heheheee.. never believe on any e-mail that ask to follow link and keyin personel information but instead open banking website in a new windows…
i’m only 90%
Cool! I got 10 of 10, its easy! Probably if received emails do not contain links, asking to visit current website or promotion and just inform you, is not a phishing.. Thank You
9 on 10
8 of 10 ten man.
thanks raymond, 8/10
7/10 . interesting read
8/10
thank you Raymond for your tips, the internet community loves you !
First try was 3/10
10/10 but I think I was lucky-very interesting to read the analysis of each page- I learned quite a bit
i get 7 out of 10
Got 10/10 on first try…Thank you ray!!!
10 out of 10!! :)
Pretty cool test… I think I\\\’m going to recommend this for some of my friends!
Thanks Ray! :D
weeeeeeee 10 out off 10
Hey got 7 out of 10.
i think i did ok.
I,ve got 8 out of 10 correct. Very useful site!
First try 8/10. Second perfect. Nice knowledge site.
I got 80%.
Lol this site is details everything you need to know about phishing and spam lol.
I got the “Paypal” question wrong. XD
You got 10 out of 10 correct. :D
Thx Raymond!.
Thanks, i thought I was fairly informed, but I only got 8 of 10 correct. I guess i have to pay a little more attention to these things.
Thanks again
I got 2 wrong.
9/10..whoa!
I’ve got 7/10…not bad for youngster like me…….lol
i got 7 out of 10.
10/10 On the first go….yuppppeee !!!!
10/10
Really useful!!
Actually I don’t use outlook (or other software) for mailing purpose and what I noticed in some quiz emails that are marked as legitimate their “To” and “From” fields are same.
Can you explain why?
8/10. I will not find pretexts. I need to get better at detecting them.
dude can u post an article i mean do u know how to CHANGE WINDOW MEDIA PLAYER LANGUAGE PLEASE!!!
Yeah I got 9/10!!!!!!!!!
6/10…I don’t get much spam mails + I live in the Netherlands, so most mails would be Dutch too.
10/10…………..
As intelligent as u Raymond?
Is it’nt raymond
9/10
Got no. 6 wrong. Not bad though :)
8/10… got last 2 wrong lol