What is Click Jacking?
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As a web savvy person of the modern era, you probably believe you are aware of all the potential security threats that you might come across when surfing the web. You know better than to trust that PayPal e-mail telling you to log in in 24 hours or your account will be closed, and you don't randomly download or open e-mail attachments, so you think you have the game locked up. Well, phishers have another way to get to you and your sensitive personal information. It's called click jacking, and this article will tell you what it is and how to protect yourself.
Internet scammers have been working very diligently on new and more interesting ways to separate you from your money or information. Sadly, it’s no longer just fools who are parted from their money. Now those with intelligent insight who are doing everything right can still find themselves hijacked, or more accurately, I should say that they might find themselves click jacked.
No doubt, you’re sitting in front of a screen perplexed. What is click jacking, anyway? Unless you spend a lot of time surfing sites devoted to Internet security, you’ve probably never heard the term before. That’s okay, we will start with a brief definition of click jacking, and then move on to where you might encounter it and what those evil scammers will be using it for. Don’t worry; by the end of this piece, the new security threat on the scene will no longer be a mystery to you.
Click jacking is essentially hijacking a click. This means that you, as the end-user, will think that you are clicking on one thing, when in reality you're clicking on another. This probably doesn’t sound like much of a big deal on the surface, until you consider that you might think you’re clicking “submit” on your bank’s website, and really you’ve just given your username and password to somebody who plans to drain your account in the next five minutes.
Do you think you understand the problem? The bad news is that you only understand a part of it. The real sticky widget in this situation is that you could be clicking a button that looks completely legitimate and is even on a completely legitimate site. You can actually be on your bank’s website and still get click jacked.
To make matters worse, you won’t even see the button clicking. Don’t get me wrong; you’ll see a button, the button you always see every day when you click on the site -- and that button will even be completely intact!
Before you decide to read another article, thinking that I have completely lost my mind, give me a chance to explain. Click jacking works as if a second button, which is invisible, has been placed over the legitimate button. This means when you think you’re clicking the right button, you’re in fact clicking the button over it. Everything looks normal, but something is rotten in the state of Denmark.
Next: The Danger of the Invisible Button >>
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