The problems of email phishing are well known. An email arrives, claiming to come from an online bank or other agency, asking you to confirm your credentials by clicking on a link and filling in a form. In reality, you are handing your confidential data straight into the hands of scammers.

The latest development in phishing is voice phishing where scammers use VOIP to build bogus switchboard systems, mimicking those of genuine online banks. Emails are spammed out, claiming to come from an online company, but rather than include a link to a bogus website instead list a phone number to call.

To the recipient it sounds as though they are through to the genuine company, as software makes it relatively simple to sound like a large organisation's telephone queuing system. The phishers can then steal information from the innocent user.

Furthermore, the email can be sent out as "image spam". That means there are no actual words in the email message, just an embedded image. This is done by phishers to try and circumvent less sophisticated anti-spam filters that may rely upon textual content or links when deciding which messages to block.

What is sneaky about this kind of phishing campaign is it doesn't ring the alarm bells that the average consumer imagines when he or she thinks about a phish. For instance, it doesn't include a link to a website but tells users to call a number instead.

Computer users know the domain names of their favorite online companies, but they certainly wouldn't know the number. Everyone needs to be on their guard against the latest phishing, spam and malware attacks if they wish to keep their finances in good order.