CYBER WISE ANGELS
Nothing is 100% secure
PHISHING
Do you know these things about phishing?
WHY CARE?
Phishing is a type of social engineering which aims to manipulate or trick you into doing something against your own interest.
Ordinarily, the end goal is to steal your credentials or hack your device / account.
If you click on a link then you have a high chance of downloading malware or being routed to a fake page where you'll inevitably continue on to providing login credentials or banking details.
So don't be a victim and stay ahead of the game with the latest trends and advice!
STATISTICS
37.9% of untrained users fail phishing tests (according to the '2020 Phishing By Industry Benchmarking Report' by KnowBe4)
TYPES OF PHISHING
There are lots of different variations of phishing created by hackers and scammers trying to implement newer ways into your device.
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Phishing - your generic phishing emails sent out to an extensive list of people. Most people know not to interact with the emails, but sadly a small percentage of people still do. If the scammer sends out 1000 emails and gets a 3% success rate then they have still made enough money for it to be worth their time in doing so.
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Spear Phishing - Spear phishing aims to achieve a higher success rate than a generic phishing email. Meaning, they put a little more effort in to create an email much more tempting to the target.
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Whaling - This is spear phishing to high profile targets who will have much more access rights or a reputation for integrity.
For example, the account of a celebrity with a large following could be utilised to send out a phishing scam and bring back a higher success rate.
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Smishing - This is phishing over text message. You may get a text from a company asking you to phone them on a certain number, or click a link, etc. Just the same as a phishing email but via text.
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Vishing - Voice-Phishing. Usually in the form of a phone call. Don't be afraid to hang up and call the company back, from another phone, after looking up their number in an official directory.
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Search Engine Phishing - This is where the scammer creates a fake website and waits for you to visit it. The name will likely be similar to a reputable company, only missing a letter or with another small & unnoticeable tweak. All the more reason to be inspecting those hyper links and double checking the URL before you click onto a website.
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Pharming - Is a more technical attack. Simplified though, it manipulates your computer to bring you onto a different site than you click on. So for example, you might command your computer to navigate to the Cyber Wise Angels home page, but the attacker will bring you to their site instead. This attack is more complicated and less common though. So you can judge it for yourself and see whether your risk appetite can accommodate it.
HOW TO STAY SAFE
Keep your software up-to-date. That includes your operating system, applications, and security software.
Companies watch for hacks & scams which might effect their products and send out these updates to block the vulnerabilities.
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Keep up-to-date with the latest trends by following a cyber crime blog, twitter feed, or reading the techy bit of your usual news reports. If you know this you'll know about all the big scams being reported.
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Verify! Verify! Verify!
It does no harm to check the authenticity of something suspicious. If it is an email from your bank, or a message from a friend, just get in touch with them from a different device to make sure it was a legitimate message.
If it is a company you are unsure about then look up their contact details in an official directory and phone them from a different device.
HOW TO REPORT PHISHING SCAMS
Phishing emails are being sent all over the internet. So many that it would be hugely expensive and even more time consuming to try to seek justice for them individually. Â
Fortunately, there are agencies whom you can report phishing emails to which will use the masses of information to narrow down a search for the sender. Some of these agencies have a very high success rate.