Phishing scams are rampant on the Internet. If you’ve got an e-mail inbox and a public address, chances are you are exposed to several phishing e-mails a week, perhaps several a day.
Alibaba.com’s roster of 2.5 million supplier storefronts and nearly 30 million registered users presents a temptingly large pond for scammers and phishermen. No surprise, then, that the B2B website’s Trust & Safety team, which deals with online security for site members, reports that it receives complaints of suspicious e-mails purporting to be from Alibaba.com on a daily basis. Virtually all of these messages are attempts to trick Alibaba.com users into divulging valuable personal or business information.
You’re probably familiar with how phishing works. Pretending to be a representative of a real company like a bank or Alibaba.com, a scammer sends you an official-looking e-mail telling you there’s a problem with your account, inviting you to participate in a special deal, notifying you that you’ve won a contest you didn’t enter, or something equally lame.
You are then urged to download an attachment or click a link that takes you to an official-looking (but fake) phishing website where you are prompted to type in user names, passwords, credit card details, account numbers, etc. You are being conned into thinking you are dealing with a trusted company. In fact, you are handing your private data to a thief who will use it to steal from you or others, or will sell the information to other thieves.
Alibaba.com members can protect themselves by following tips from the website’s Trust & Safety team posted below. In addition, Alibaba.com now offers members the option of creating a unique “Sign-in Seal” that can help alert you if you have strayed off the reservation and into a phisher’s net. By activating this feature, a personal message or image of your choosing will be displayed every time you visit a genuineAlibaba.com sign-in page using your primary computer. If ever you think you are logging onto Alibaba.com but don’t see the seal, or if the message,image or colors are off, you may be on a phishing website.
Don’t Get Hooked! Phish-fighting Tips From Alibaba.com
√¢—¬è Treat your public inbox like a box of poisonous snakes. Don’t poke and prod at things you don’t recognize. Don’t open unsolicited e-mail. Don’t click on links or download e-mail attachments from strangers.
√¢—¬è If you think you have reached an Alibaba.com sign-in page but aren’t sure, check the webpage URL. Most Alibaba.com sign-in page addresses begin with http://alibaba.com/ or http://my.alibaba.com/.
√¢—¬è Alibaba.com will never ask you for your password, credit card information or other personal information via e-mail or in an e-mail attachment.
√¢—¬è If you receive a suspicious e-mail purporting to be from Alibaba.com, you can report it by contacting the website. Click here.
