Patrick Domingues

If you didn’t know already, phishing is a social engineering attack that lands in your inbox with the intention of stealing personal info. Often times, phishing emails appear to come from a known contact (friends, family, co-workers) or an organization, such as a bank or credit card company. Attacks often feature malicious links or attachments that compromise the victim’s device with malware.

POPULATION

Over 280 billion emails are sent each day. If you imagine that even a small percentage of them are phishing attacks, you can see why this threat is so pervasive.

APPEARANCE

You can identify phishing emails by a variety of distinct markings: bad spelling and poor grammar, odd phrasing or awkward sentence structuring, impersonal greetings such as “Dear Customer” instead of using your name, and web addresses that resemble a legitimate business but are slightly misspelled.

BEHAVIOR

Phishing emails typically come with a sense of urgency. They often claim that your account has been compromised, or that a payment is overdue, accompanied with a call for action such as clicking on a link or downloading an attachment. Always remain skeptical of any emails that contain threatening language, and think before you click!

CONFUSION SPECIES

Spear phishing emails can masquerade as legitimate emails, tricking us in to sending valuable information or clicking on malicious links. We may even suspect real emails sent by those we know, without any malicious motives, due to the sophistication of some phishing attacks.

Learn more about social engineering 

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Patrick Domingues

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