Cyber Security & Social Engineering: Phishing
1 February 2022
How to Recognize Phishing Attacks
Scammers use email or text messages to trick you into giving them your personal information. They may try to steal your passwords, account numbers, or Social Security numbers. If they get that information, they could gain access to your email, bank, or other accounts. Scammers launch thousands of phishing attacks like these every day — and they’re often successful. A survey carried out by Censuswide, found that approximately 185,000 Irish people – have fallen victim to a phishing scam.
Scammers often update their tactics, but there are some signs that will help you recognize a phishing email or text message.
Phishing emails and text messages may look like they’re from a company you know or trust. They may look like they’re from a bank, a credit card company, a social networking site, an online payment website or app, or an online store.
Phishing emails and text messages often tell a story to trick you into clicking on a link or opening an attachment.
They may:
- Say they’ve noticed some suspicious activity or log-in attempts
- Claim there’s a problem with your account or your payment information
- Say you must confirm some personal information
- Include a fake invoice
- Want you to click on a link to make a payment
- Say you’re eligible to register for a government refund
- Offer a coupon for free products
Here’s a real world example of a phishing email:
There are some obvious giveaways with the above email which tells us that this is a phishing attempt.
Once we hover over the ‘Click here to update your payment information’ link we can see that actual web address is a bogus one and not from Glivy. The multiple other email addresses in the address bar is another giveaway, as is the urgent nature of the email trying to prey on our insecurities. The recipient’s name is not added as a salutation, rather just ‘Glivy Subscriber’. All of these are warning signs telling us that this is an attempt at phishing and that this email should be instantly blocked.
These are some of the topics which are covered in our new Cybersecurity: Social Engineering course.
For any questions relating to cyber security training please contact Cormac on 01 278 1938.