We talk a lot about phishing. What it is, what it does, and perhaps most critically, what it looks like. However, have you ever expected a phishing email to look like… nothing? As in, a completely blank message? If you answered, “no,” that’s exactly what today’s cybercriminals are counting on.
Cybercrime is a big deal; and phishing is behind a large percentage of the cyberattacks out there. The act of phishing is a good old-fashioned social engineering scheme. Basically, a scammer sends a message with the intent to have someone interact with the message, thus giving them access (or at least the information needed to gain access) to accounts. This month, we thought we’d briefly go through phishing messages and how to identify them.
I’m talking about when the heir to the Nigerian throne would reach out to your Hotmail account to help him secure his inheritance, or when an attractive woman or man you’ve never met before would email you out of the blue asking if you were single; spam has always been annoying, but back then, it was clearly just junk that could be ignored. Today, it’s not so simple.