Everything seems to be online in this day and age, whether it's your bank, your mail or your shopping. Each of these require a unique login to identify you. Unfortunately usernames can be quite easy to come by, in fact on many sites your username is public (Ebay is a good example of this).

So how do you protect yourself from this threat? Generally it simply requires a little bit of common sense. You wouldn't provide just anyone with a copy of the key to your house, so why do the same for your online persona?

You may, on occasion, receive emails from your Bank, or from PayPal, notifiying you that they are undergoing a security re-vamp and need you to verify your identity. You are usually give a link to open a page requesting your password. If you receive one of these, apply a little bit of common sense and ask yourself exactly why the bank would want this. Check the sender details in the email (though these can be faked, so beware)and contact the supposed sender to verify the legitimacy of the email.

Most Financial Institutions make it clear that they will never ask you to enter your passcode/phrase in whole, and certainly never by email. Yet many people still fall for these scams. One common reason for people clicking these links in emails is that it appears to link to the website you would expect. However in a HTML email it is all too easy to create a link that appears to point to www.barclays.com but will actually open www.gimmeyourdetails.com.