It seems like a week cannot go by without another phishing and hacking story in the news. This time a 24-year-old man used a phishing scam to target acquaintances and people he went to high school with to obtain their Gmail passwords. After finding their email address on their Facebook profile, he tricked them by emailing fake electronic greeting cards that would ask them for login information for their Web mail accounts. Once he had hacked into between 350 and 500 Gmail accounts, he trolled for compromising pictures of the women and wasted no time in posting them to their Facebook accounts. He even set up his own website to showcase these photos.

Phishing scams prey on the vulnerable, usually by presenting themselves via email as a legitimate and well-known company and requesting your passwords to an email or social networking account. For example, a company posing as your bank may email you saying there has been some sort of mistake and they need all of your online banking account passwords to restore your online banking privileges. The less tech-savvy can fall for these scams and share their password information with these criminals. It can then take months or even years to sort the mess out.

Bottom Line: Never share your passwords with anyone either via email or over the phone. If you get an email from a company that you think may be legitimate, go to their website directly and login from there, or call the company and ask them if they sent the email. Whatever you do, never click on the links in the email. Just one click could get you infected by a virus. Businesses should have anti-spam filters and email filtering software in place to protect their employees from these types of scams.