Aside from protecting your computer bu installing a powerful anti-virus, spyware and adware, should also know how to determine if a certain website is a phishing site or not. Phishing, though it will not destroy your computer, your account information like login id, password and even your credit card information could be possibly be hacked by this phishing sites.
Usually, this culprits send email notices about your account at Paypal.com that it should be checked, verified and so on for security reasons. A link instructing you click is added in the email and you might not notice it, this is the link which your account details will be sent to the owner of the phishing site. If you clicked that link upon reading this post, I stringly recommend to cgange your password immediately. it not, the money stored in your account will be hacked for sure.
To determine if that email notice came from paypal or any other payment method being used online, mouse over the link first to see if it the notice really came from paypay for example. The link should appear paypal.com without any long tail sub folders connected to it. If in any case the link appears very long, you should not click it. This is a phishing link.
This is actually one of the effects of the opt-in list internet marketing. This is why it is very important to use another email if are visiting another websites which requires an email address before you can access the site. Do not use your personal email id used in such payment method, create another email for to be used instead. This is only the way to avoid these phishing websites.
