Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as user names, passwords and credit card numbers by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. In other words, a thief sends out an e-mail asking the recipient to respond with information for one reason or another. Thieves will also use pop-up windows that often contain links that take the computer user to a site that appears legitimate and asks for personal information.

The Better Business Bureau has issued a warning about the Amazon scam. Identity thieves are sending e-mails that appear to be from Amazon.com, thanking the customer for a recent purchase. The e-mail includes a bogus order number and price, and asks the customer to click a link. The link either downloads a virus to the user’s computer, or leads to a Web site that asks the user to input his or her credit card information and Amazon.com log in information.

If your information were input without your permission as part of this scam, your credit – and your good name – could be ruined.

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An unnamed Gmail user—let’s call him Bob—did just the right thing when he received an email from the Rocky Mountain Bank of Wyoming, a bank he’d never heard of: suspecting they were phishing attempts or spam, he deleted the email without opening it.

Someone at the bank accidentally sent Bob the account information of 1,300 customers. Once the error was discovered, the bank tried to contact Bob by sending more emails, and again, Bob deleted them.

Imagine Bob’s surprise the day he received a message from Google saying, “Per court order in a case brought by a Wyoming-based bank, your Gmail account has been disabled and your account information provided to the bank.”

So that’s the second lesson we all need to learn: cloud computing can be seriously risky. Imagine what would happen to a business that uses Google for email, contacts, calendars, chats, Wave and AdSense. Because of someone else’s error, that business could be immediately rendered dead in the water.

One of the greatest ironies of the Bob debacle is that shutting down his Gmail account didn’t do a thing to protect the accountholders; if Bob wanted to use the information maliciously, he surely would have already done so, or at least printed or copied the information. And there are other email providers Bob could have used to spread the information around.

In the phony e-mails, consumers are asked to update their contact information so they can receive “new, more secure software,” according to Tracy Hargrove, vice president of operations for the Bureau.

Hargrove said the BBB learned that the fraudulent e-mails were being sent nationwide on Wednesday. Businesses from all over the country alerted the Bureau that they had received the suspicious e-mails asking them to send updated contact information. The business owners were alarmed because that’s one of the things the Bureau warns consumers against doing.

The Better Business Bureau advises consumers to take the following precautions:

• Never open suspicious e-mails.
• If you received a suspicious e-mail from the BBB, report it to phishing@council.bbb.org/.
• To receive reliable information and updates on this phishing attack visit the website, bbb.org/security alerts/.

For more information on services to help protect your credit, finances and name, visit LifeLock.com. Click on the “How LifeLock Works” tab to learn more about LifeLock’s exclusive services. Life Lock now provides their award-winning identity theft protection to almost 1.5 million Americans. When you’re ready to enroll, use the LifeLock discount code Defense to receive a discount on service and a 30 day trial.