Businesses with online merchant accounts must beware of a process called Phishing. This is a fraudulent activity many cyber thieves resort to in order to cheat you of your online funds and products.

The process is simple and is designed to take you unawares. Though Phishing is an illegal activity and any one engaging in it is liable to be punished by law, catching the crook is the crux of the matter.

Phishers send out hundreds of emails to unsuspecting people asking for personal details such as mothers maiden names, surnames, date of birth credit card numbers etc. The intention is to use this information to try and crack online passwords. ‘ Many online merchants have had their online payment processing accounts hacked only because they fell for one of the many Phishing tactics online.

A Phisher will send out hundreds of mails disguised as a message or even a page that looks like a payment processor page or an online bank login page. The content mail will probably try to fool the user (by asking them to login and change their password) into logging into their online account by entering their username and password.

When the submit button is clicked, instead of the account page being opened, nothing happens, or so many people think. What has in fact happened is that the password and username has been emailed to some distant account and may be used in a matter of minutes to log in and change the password of the account by the Phisher.

There is only one way to avoid this and that is to close all internet applications and log into your online merchant account site by manually typing in the URL of the site. Never click on an email link to go to your merchant account site.