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Phishing is an e-mail fraudulent method that attempts to gather personal and financial information such as credit card details, usernames and passwords from recipients. The messages usually appears to come from well known and trustworthy websites. Popular websites that are frequently spoofed are social websites (YouTube, Window Live Messenger), auction sites (eBay, lelong.com.my), online banks (Maybank2u.com), online payment processors (PayPal) and it is typically done through e-mail or instant messaging.

Let me illustrate few classic examples of phishing. 

Illustration 2: PayPal

Hints to Spot Phishing Scams

All legitimate institution communication will always greet the user with his or her real name or the name of the email, not just with a generic greeting like, "Dear Accountholder." Other signs that the message is a fraud are misspellings of simple words, bad grammar and the threat of consequences such as account suspension if the recipient fails to comply with the message's requests.

Nevertheless, we should also examine the link provided whether it goes to where it supposes to go. In the example of eBay in Illustration 1, it seems that you are being directed to eBay site for verification https://scgi.ebay.com/saw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?VerifyInformation but if you click on the link, you will find that you have been directed to a different site. The best way to avoid this is to copy and paste the link (NEVER click it!) to your address bar.

Preventions

The best way to keep yourself away from phishing scams is to preventing them to go in your mailbox. You may have separate email addresses for different usage, one for financial institutions, one for trusted friends and families and one for public or general use. You have to do everything possible to keep the address you use for financial transactions as private as possible.

Moreover, there are ample of anti-phishing softwares available in the market such as McAfee SiteAdvisor, Kaspersky Internet Security, Norton 360 and etc. Even web browsers like Microsoft Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2.0 also comes with anti-phishing functions. So, all these may help to keep you away from being the bait.

The last piece of advice to avoid becoming a phishing scam victim is to use your best judgement. None of the financial institution with any sense will email you and ask you to input all your sensitive and private information. In fact, most institutions are reminding and informing customers that “We will NEVER ask you for your personal information via phone or email.”

Video Sharing to clarify on Phishing Scams in Plain English

References:

http://ezinearticles.com/?How-to-Prevent-Phishing-Scams&id=1147318

http://banking.about.com/od/securityandsafety/a/phishingscams.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing