Phishing is the process of attempting to acquire sensitive information like user names, passwords, credit card details and debit card details. User unknowingly enters his/her secret information at duplicate but same looking websites. Phishing attacks are increasing day by day, due to lack of awareness in users.

Auction sites like E-bay and online payment sites like Pay pal users are the major victims of phishing attacks. Hackers target these sites because they carry huge amount of financial transactions, . Mostly Phishing links are sent through e-mails or instant messaging services. These links directs to a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the original one.

Experts advice to use good anti virus, internet security packages to protect from these kind of phishing attacks. Always observe the URL where you are going to enter a sensitive information, it should always start with https. Normal websites contains only http, only secured websites contains the character s in http (for security).

Gmail is providing a very good option in Google Labs, which finds the phishing links related to E-Bay and Paypal in e-mails. Follow the simple steps explained here to enable the option Authentication icon for verified senders.

• Select the Settings at top right corner.



• Select the tab Labs from the settings.



• Go to the option Authentication icon for verified Senders and click on the radio button Enable.



• Click on Save Changes at top left corner.

According to Brad Taylor at from Gmailblog:

It’s a bit of work for senders to make their email super-trustworthy, which is why this feature is limited to just eBay and PayPal right now. We hope to add more senders in the future, and when we do, you’ll know because you’ll see the super-trustworthy key icon magically appear by those senders too.