On the Inside

Last week, I provided you with some practical steps to avoid being caught in a phishing expedition. This week, I am going to arm you with a few things to protect yourself and your good name. Often, the sole purpose of phishing is to separate you from your money. The way that this is usually done is through identity theft.
I told you last week that the website that was posing as DMFCU was tracked back to Singapore. Well, this week I’m going to show you how to track the owners of websites. Many Internet users are under the impression that you are anonymous when you are online. This notion is not entirely true. Whether you are chatting under an assumed name or maintaining a webpage, you can be identified. Most of the resources to do so are online and free.
If you were the victim of an online identity theft via a website, then you may be able to put a face on your digital assailant. The purpose for tracking them down is not so that you can show up on their front porch, and they can say hello to your little friend. This is my personal semi-legal disclaimer. The rationale behind performing a search for the owner of the website is so you can provide the proper authorities with as much information as you possibly can without breaking any laws.
It is not difficult to trace the owner of a website that is used for identity theft. Every website online must be registered in order for it to become accessible. We can use this registration information to track the owner. If you are moderately tech savvy, you can start by looking in the email that was sent to you. You need to see the full header for the email. The header explains the route that the email took to get to you. In the header, you should be able to see where the email originated. If that sounded a little confusing, there is a simpler way to get the drop on online identity thieves. If you click the fake link in the email it should ferry you to a site that looks like an authentic site, and it will prompt you to enter your information. As long as you do not enter any information, you should be fine. What you want to do is to write down the exact web address for the site that you are visiting.
Next, you go to www.register.com and select whois lookup under the tab named domain. Enter the name of the website in the search window and perform the search. You should see who the owner of the website is along with a physical address and phone number. You can use this information to aid the proper authorities in shutting down the illegal outfit. If you are not a victim, but you received a phishing email, you can forward this information to authorities so that someone else will not become a victim.