Irresistible WebScams You Need to Resist
In their ongoing attempts to sucker us in, cybercriminals are constantly looking for methods to target our sentimentality and present us with things that are too irresistible to ignore. By thinking with our hearts and not our heads we can leave ourselves frightfully vulnerable to cyber attack, or open the door for hackers to enter the companies we work for. Being ever vigilant is the watchword; so if you are sent something that gives you that warm fuzzy feeling inside, think twice before opening it or clicking on a link that you might come to regret.
Here are a couple of the latest scams doing the rounds that everyone should be mindful of:
The Bogus Wedding Invitation.
You fire up your browser, open your inbox and there waiting for you is a wedding invitation from two of your nearest and dearest. Who couldn't resist opening that wonderful email immediately? Well hopefully you will be resolute enough not to go jumping in head first because this little invite will more than likely turn out to be an invitation to allow malware to infect your system and glean all of your personal data.
As with many of these spear phishing attacks, the devil (or recognizing the devil) is in the detail. The message body reads, "You are Cordially Invited to Celebrate the Our Wedding" which is your first clue. Often these bogus emails come form countries in which English is not the first language, and so grammatical errors are prevalent in the text. In this case the "Celebrate the Our Wedding" should act as a red flag to anyone reading it. You can read more about the bogus wedding invitation email here.
Adorable Kittens With Unseen Claws.
AhhhhâEUR¦ pictures of adorable kittens, who can resist, right? Well that's exactly what the cybercriminals have realized, and now they're using photographs of cute kittens to fool the hapless recipient into opening what turns out to be a very nasty bit of malware-stuffed email indeed.
Thankfully though this story can have a happy ending, because online security experts have been creating fake emails with kitten pictures and using them to train end-users in the ways of online security awareness. The experts' emails are harmless of course, but they highlight to the end-user just how easy it is for the cybercriminal to dupe them into opening an email - just by adding the picture of some cute kittens.
Remember, just because it looks cute doesn't mean it doesn't have claws, so always think twice before opening email, especially if you're not sure who it's from.
Here are a couple of the latest scams doing the rounds that everyone should be mindful of:
The Bogus Wedding Invitation.
You fire up your browser, open your inbox and there waiting for you is a wedding invitation from two of your nearest and dearest. Who couldn't resist opening that wonderful email immediately? Well hopefully you will be resolute enough not to go jumping in head first because this little invite will more than likely turn out to be an invitation to allow malware to infect your system and glean all of your personal data.
As with many of these spear phishing attacks, the devil (or recognizing the devil) is in the detail. The message body reads, "You are Cordially Invited to Celebrate the Our Wedding" which is your first clue. Often these bogus emails come form countries in which English is not the first language, and so grammatical errors are prevalent in the text. In this case the "Celebrate the Our Wedding" should act as a red flag to anyone reading it. You can read more about the bogus wedding invitation email here.
Adorable Kittens With Unseen Claws.
AhhhhâEUR¦ pictures of adorable kittens, who can resist, right? Well that's exactly what the cybercriminals have realized, and now they're using photographs of cute kittens to fool the hapless recipient into opening what turns out to be a very nasty bit of malware-stuffed email indeed.
Thankfully though this story can have a happy ending, because online security experts have been creating fake emails with kitten pictures and using them to train end-users in the ways of online security awareness. The experts' emails are harmless of course, but they highlight to the end-user just how easy it is for the cybercriminal to dupe them into opening an email - just by adding the picture of some cute kittens.
Remember, just because it looks cute doesn't mean it doesn't have claws, so always think twice before opening email, especially if you're not sure who it's from.
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