While theft has always been a part of human history, it now has a new form called "cyber theft" as mankind steps into the information age. Cyber theft is conducted in many ways but all are conducted by means of a process known as phishing. Phishing, pronounced in the same way as fishing, is used to steal user data stored on personal computers, tablet pcs, mobile phones, or other electronic devices when users click unauthorized popup windows or web pages. According to rough estimates, there are more than 1 million phishing websites in China now and the financial loss linked to cyber theft among common citizens has reached 10 billion dollars in recent years.
Experts have provided several ways by which to distinguish phishing websites from legal ones. First, Internet users need to check whether a website is lawfully registered; an unregistered website is probably embedded with a background process that records any keyboard operation, thereby revealing the keys pressed (such as some passwords for an online banking account or for a social networking platform). Second, a fake website differs from the real one in many ways such as the address (the fake website might use the number 1 in place of the letter I in the real address), the texts (the font sizes of the fake are usually not consistent) and the linked websites (in a fake website, linked websites are usually unavailable). Third, phishing websites are filled with popup windows or links, most of which are also invalid.
Apart from users' examination of suspicious websites, related administrations should make efforts to curb the spread of phishing websites. For example, new websites should go through a stricter governmental examination before becoming available to Internet surfers. Besides, there should be regular censorship over all registered websites to make sure that no lawbreakers can make profit via phishing.
