Technology plays a very important part in our lives. Most of our work now a days happens online. A lot of our personal data is online, which may not always be protected. While we put our data on the internet it can be easily available to hackers if we are not cautious enough. Hackers hack our data and manipulate it in different ways to suit their agenda. Once our devices and data are hacked it can do irreversible harm to us and our devices. All of these hacking mostly happens with a lot of anonymity. If internet users are not careful enough, they become subjects to internet frauds and hacks 

One of the many internet frauds is ‘Phishing’, phishing is a form of fraud in which an attacker masquerades as a reputable entity or person in email or other forms of communication. Attackers will commonly use phishing emails to distribute malicious links or attachments that can perform a variety of functions. Some will extract login credentials or account information from victims. 

Phishing attacks typically rely on social networking techniques applied to email or other electronic communication methods. Some methods include direct messages sent over social networks and SMS text messages. 

The word “phishing” originally came from the analogy of early Internet criminals using email lures to “fish” for passwords and financial data from a large sea of unsuspecting Internet users. The use of the “ph” in this terminology has been forgotten about over time. It was most likely linked to hacker naming conventions such as “Phreaks”. 

This can be traced back to early hackers who were involved in “phreaking” – the hacking of telephone systems. The term was coined during 1996, by hackers who were stealing America Online (AOL) accounts. They were picking off passwords from AOL users. The first mention on the Internet of phishing was made in 2600 hacker newsgroup in January 1996, however the term may have been used even earlier in the popular hacker magazine called “2600”. 

Phishing starts with a fraudulent email or any other communication that is designed to get the attention of the victim. The email usually looks genuine. If the mail succeeds to fool the victim, they are lured to provide personal and confidential information. Sometimes even a malware is downloaded on the victim’s device. 

Types of Phishing attacks, 

Deceptive phishing 

Spear phishing 

Whaling 

Pharming 

Phishing attacks don’t only happen to individuals but also to companies and corporations. It is important to educate people about the concept of phishing and how dangerous it can be. People and employees should be educated on how to identify fraudulent mails and what should be done when they receive such an email. 

To help prevent phishing messages from reaching end users, experts recommend layering security controls, including: 

antivirus software; 

both desktop and network firewalls; 

antispyware software; 

Anti-phishing toolbar (installed in web browsers); 

gateway email filter; 

web security gateway; 

a spam filter; and 

phishing filters from vendors such as Microsoft. 

Many organisations and companies experience changes in their working conditions lately due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This shift furthers the reliance on email for communication, thus creating perfect conditions for email fraud schemes. 

Cyber criminals are taking advantage of the pandemic by using widespread awareness of the subject to trick users into revealing their personal information or clicking on malicious links or attachments, unwittingly downloading malware to their computers. They may even impersonate government organisations, ministries of health, centers for public health or important figures in a relevant country in order to disguise themselves as reliable sources. 

As society inclines more towards technology, we will have to be face more challenges that come along with it. The internet and technology cannot be dismissed from our lives completely. We as netizens need to be smarter and more aware than before. 

References, 

https://www.enisa.europa.eu/news/enisa-news/understanding-and-dealing-with-phishing-during-the-covid-19-pandemic

https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/definition/phishing

Aishwarya Says:

I have always been against Glorifying Over Work and therefore, in the year 2021, I have decided to launch this campaign “Balancing Life”and talk about this wrong practice, that we have been following since last few years. I will be talking to and interviewing around 1 lakh people in the coming 2021 and publish their interview regarding their opinion on glamourising Over Work.

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