By means of phishing, the criminals lure victims into providing their passwords and other personal information.
Fraudsters try to obtain confidential data from unsuspecting users. This could involve access credentials for email accounts, online auction sites or credit card details. The fraudsters take advantage of their victims' good faith and helpfulness by sending them emails with false sender addresses. The emails tell the victims that their account details and access credentials (e.g. username and password) are no longer secure or up-to-date, for instance, and need to be changed using the link provided in the email. However, the link does not lead to the genuine page of the respective service provider, rather to the fraudster's apparently identical web page.