Phishing in dirty waters

One of my friends got a phishing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing
http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/email/phishing.mspx?ifs=0
http://www.antiphishing.org/consumer_recs.html
mail purportedly sent from customer-service@hdfcbank.com. It told the account holder to review her one-year account transactions. It was followed by a suspicious link, which on clicking resembled the HDFC page but the site’s address was not that of HDFC. My unsuspecting friend had clicked the link and that brought her world crashing down. A huge sum from her account had been transferred to an unknown HDFC account in Surat.
On contacting the Bank officials we came to know that the guy had withdrawn the money quickly. The official also added that my friend was not the only one to be affected. 4 other transactions have happened within half an hour towards that account and that guy had withdrawn the entire amount.
People who use netbanking ought to be aware of such things. HDFC officials send cautionary mails to their customers regarding phishing. In their mail they tell customers not to reveal the passwords to anyone including Bank officials. They also specify that the Bank will never ask for account no or password from their customers simply because they already know it. Unfortunately some mail clients identifies these warning mails as spam.
We see many such phishing cases in newspapers. Being caught unawares in such a nasty scam can be painful. I happened to accompany my friend to the Cyber crime police station this Friday after she fell prey for such a scam. The police traced the IP address of the sender to be from Bulgaria. The guy has obviously used Proxy address making it difficult for the police to nab him.
In the police station I happened to see another one guy who had lost an unbelievable Rs.10 lakhs to some fake company claiming to get him work permit in UK. As long as there are gullible people there will be people to deceive them as well.
We know how hard we work to earn every paisa. We should know how to safeguard such hard-earned money. As my dad used to say it’s harder to safeguard the money you earned than to actually earn that money.