No, phishing and pharming are not new agricultural pursuits, but methods used by criminals to steal personal information. These criminals are carrying out fraudulent activities in an attempt to steal information such as credit card numbers and passwords, bank account numbers and logon passwords, and social security data so as to ultimately steal people's money. This type of behaviour is not new - it's just that the Internet provides the criminals with the means to get a better "rate of return", so to speak.

You'll know you're being phished when an email lands in your inbox with a subject such as "Such and such Bank - Fraud Alert". Text in the message will go something like "We recently noticed one or more attempts to log in your such-and-such bank account from a foreign IP address and we have reasons to believe that your account was hijacked by a third party without your authorization... If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choice but to temporally suspend your account." Then a link is given to a page where the user is asked to enter various pieces of personal information to verify their identity - and in the process, hand it over to the criminals.

The first point to notice is that these criminals do not announce they want to steal your personal data. They use a process which has been termed "social engineering" to sound authoritative and make statements that are aimed to make us feel guilty, insecure and worried, and, if we do nothing, the sky will fall in on us. In webDotWiz's case, the scammers chose a bank that webDotWiz had never heard of, much less have an account with. But how would you respond if the email had arrived, looking as though it came from your personal bank?

To guard yourself, follow the rule that's been written many times in this column: If you don't know, don't click the link, but simply delete the post from your inbox. Don't be tempted to follow your curiousity. If you know about spoofed email addresses and DNS hijacking and poisoning then you might be able to track down the original source but it's much easier to just hit delete.

So make sure your antivirus is up-to-date and XP users, you should have installed MS Antispyware. Other Windows users should have downloaded and installed Ad-aware and Spybot.

Finally, take some time to visit the sites listed this week to learn more so you don't fall into the trap set by crimeware.