Anti-Phishing Phil

Phishing attacks are a type of scam with the intent of capturing personal information such as Social Security numbers, online banking user identification numbers, debit and credit card account numbers, and passwords. Many people can not identify what a phishing attack looks like, and even with resources like eBay's spoof e-mail tutorial and FTC's phishing prevention guide , these people will still go on unable to identify a phishing attack. I think it is important for people to be able to identify at least the most basic types of phishing attacks because they are so simple to ignore, but they can cause much damage.

After playing the game Anti-Phishing Phil I could understand how the game was much more effective in teaching people then traditional resources like eBay's spoof e-mail tutorial etc.. The reason I think that the game is much more effective is because it is a game; when people play a game they want to win, so after the first round when most people can not identify web site spoofs, they actually read and try and remember who to identify them so by level 2 they can identify them in the game and they can win. Also the game made it very simple to identify phishing scams because it would break apart URL addresses and show you what each part is, and in doing so teach you the basics of what a URL is, and then the game shows you what phishing scams do to the URL so they can steal information.