How to Avoid Falling Into the Phishing Hole

Tom Spring, PC World

You never can defend yourself too much while online.

A PC World reader alerted me to a flaw on eBay's Web site that enabled a scam designed to trick people into handing over their personal information. eBay promptly patched the flaw last week, but experts I spoke with are wondering how long the fix will hold.

The flaw allowed a scammer to use an increasingly common type of attack called cross-site scripting, or XSS, to redirect people from an eBay listing to a spoofed eBay site. Though eBay may have plugged the hole for now, experts say, similar problems have surfaced in the past on eBay and other sites, and it's a safe bet they will again.

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