Phishing is an attempt to fraudulently obtain personal information by luring you to a Web site and asking you to disclose things like passwords, credit card numbers, and so on. This Web site is spoofed, or pretending to be a trusted site—sometimes remarkably well—when it is actually a fake setup to help steal your personal information. Phishing is often done by sending e-mail that directs you to the spoofed site. With the widespread use of HTML e-mail, it’s easier to disguise the actual destination of a link, and accordingly harder for you to detect the misdirection.
Fortunately, Microsoft has added anti-phishing features to Outlook 2007, to help protect you from suspicious Web sites and e-mail addresses. E-mail messages are evaluated as they arrive, and messages that appear to be phishing are delivered to the Inbox, not the Junk E-Mail folder, but are otherwise treated much like junk e-mail, with a number of functions disabled.
Disable Links And Other Functionality In Phishing Messages. If Outlook 2007 determines that a message appears to be phishing, the message is delivered to the Inbox, but attachments and links in the message are blocked and the Reply and Reply All functions are disabled.
Warn Me About Suspicious Domain Names In E-Mail Addresses. This option warns you when the sender’s e-mail domain uses certain characters in an attempt to masquerade as a well-known, legitimate business. Leaving this functionality enabled protects you against phishing attacks using spoofed e-mail addresses.