Eugene's observations

Many people now are aware that phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an e-mail - usually a hyperlink to a web site.

To protect themselves from being spoofed, some people let the mouse pointer hover over the link and read the destination address in the status bar, but this is not a safe way to detect phishing because the status bar can easily be programmed by Javascript so show something legitimate.

The only safe way is to open your browser and type an address (or use a favourite/bookmark) into the appropriate field.