8 Common Phishing Attacks You Need to Know and How to Avoid Them

It is still beyond doubt that phishing samples remain one of the most dangerous types of threats in the context of digital risks affecting both private and legal entities. These cons involve deceitful methods of obtaining such things as passwords, account details, identification information, and credit card information.

Knowing various types of phishing, and implementing shields, such as the Office 365 email spam filter tool, can help you not become a phishing victim. Eight examples of various phishing attacks and what you should do to safeguard yourself are discussed below.

1. Email Phishing

The most frequent and shown form of phishing is Email Phishing. Identity theft schemers impersonate companies or individuals familiar to the victim by sending an email that appears to originate from the impersonated entity. Such emails, in general, send a message of emergency, for instance, the account has been hacked or a payment is due.

Prevention Tip: Use an Office 365 email spam filter to identify and block phishing emails before they reach your inbox. Also, avoid clicking on links in unsolicited emails and verify the sender’s authenticity through other channels.

2. Spear Phishing

In general, it is much more personal than any other ordinary form of phishing. The attacker brings in the identity of the recipient by including the name of the person, his or her designation, or company name thus the email looks more like it comes from a genuine source.

Prevention Tip: This goes hand in hand with emails and one should avoid falling for emails that appear to be very personalized or even contain too much of a person’s details. It is a common scam for hackers to send emails that seem like they are from your friends, your boss, or some company you trust.

3. Whaling

Whaling is identified as a type of spear phishing that is crafted to deceive main executives or some other senior staff members. This is even worse, depending on the content of the emails they send, compared to general phishing emails; these attacks involve:

Prevention Tip: Inform the heads of large-scale purchases about whaling attacks and introduce extra screening of worthwhile requests that require, for example, a direct callback.

4. Smishing (SMS Phishing)

Smishing entails the use of text message that has the malicious intent of extorting private information from victims. It may contain a link to a phishing website or prompt username and password for the sake of delivering certain important information such as a bank statement or a message about the delivery of some order.

Prevention Tip: That is why they should not follow links in unsolicited text messages. He should do this the next best way; visit the official website of the company to check on the authenticity of the information.

5. Vishing (Voice Phishing)

Vishing is perpetrated through phone calls like those of a fake bank or counterfeit technical support, made to elicit information. They might threaten such as your account has been hacked thus forcing you to take the bait.

Prevention Tip: Do not depend on what the caller is telling you but try to call the organization using any phone number provided on the organization’s website to confirm the caller’s identity.

6. Clone Phishing

Clone phishing is the next level of phishing, it is an attempt in which a similar copy of an original received and trusted message is sent where the actual link or attachment is substituted by a forged one. To get the message across, the email looks like it is coming from a trusted source, therefore, many people will fall for the scheme.

Prevention Tip: With that, do not open emails that are copied to you or emails that ask for you to download an attachment or click on a link. The best thing you can do is to compare what is in the email to the contents of the email when you open it or call the sender and ask if the email is authentic.

7. Pharming

Pharming relieves users from legitimate websites to fake sites they have no control over. To a layman, it will be quite hard to differentiate between this fake site and a real one since the aim of such sites is to fraudulently capture login credentials together with other sensitive information.

Prevention Tip: Make sure to link only to web pages with HTTPS. They are secure DNS services that can detect and block the sites, deeming them dangerous. This way, update the antivirus more often to check for redirects capable of tampering with the browser.

8. CEO Fraud

One of the most common and evolving attacks is where attackers posing as a company executive send an email to other employees of the company asking them to embark on an urgent transaction.

Prevention Tip: Teach workers about the common CEO fraud red flags and require two levels of checks to ensure substantial transactions.

Conclusion

Phishing is a broad category that includes ordinary spam messages that contain links to fake credentials pages and messages that purport to be from a company’s chief executive. Education and actions in avoiding scams like using Outlook Office 365 email filters, questioning the source of the received emails, and making use of the multiple factor authentication greatly improve your safeguarding. Be aware and make your team aware also to avoid the loss of data.