The largest online buying and selling platform, Amazon seems to be on the top of phishing emails assaults globally up to 17.7% as per the data results published by the Hornetsecurity team. Following Amazon, the German-based logistic company provider, DHL lies second, scoring 16.5% fraud emails. On third and fourth lies DocuSign and digital transactions platform PayPal, each accounting for 12.7% and 5.7% respectively. Next, LinkedIn and Microsoft fall in the fifth and sixth positions accounting for 3.5% and 3% of email phishing attacks.
As you may know, phishing attacks often impersonate a well-known brand or company to try to fool people into falling for their frauds. Mostly, the brands that are most exploited change depending on events in the news, the time of year, and other factors. Generally, cybercriminals aim to steal malware and company data by imitating fraudulent email addresses and emails content that asks for users’ personal and credential information. This can harm both users and companies leaving them vulnerable to threats. Let’s look at the ways that we can save ourselves by not falling into scammers’ traps.
S.T.O.P Method: the stop method means when you look at an email, you’re going to ask yourself four questions:
S: Is this email suspicious?
T: Is it telling me to click a link?
O: Is it offering something amazing?
P: Is it pushing me to do something quickly
If we train ourselves to be a little more critical of the emails that are coming into our inbox, we will be in a much better position to not fall for many of these complex, very tricky email phishing scams.
• Suspicious activity: this includes inappropriate grammar in the email content. Contrastingly, big companies hire a professional copywriter and content specialist. They don’t make such grammatical errors. This is an indication that the sender might be fake.
• Additional links and buttons: if you see any links attached to the receiving email, never click on them immediately. It might be a scam, do not open it.
• Offering lottery: if you noticed any email with some lotteries or offering you a refund or money. This can be an indication of a fraud email.
• Sense of urgency: cybercriminals often create a sense of urgency or even make threats to force you to act randomly so you do not take time to closely look at the message.
So if you experience any email that requires your account passwords and asking for your credit information you must regard it as a scam.
Read next: Apple’s App Store users are way ahead of Google Play users in terms of spending subscription money
As you may know, phishing attacks often impersonate a well-known brand or company to try to fool people into falling for their frauds. Mostly, the brands that are most exploited change depending on events in the news, the time of year, and other factors. Generally, cybercriminals aim to steal malware and company data by imitating fraudulent email addresses and emails content that asks for users’ personal and credential information. This can harm both users and companies leaving them vulnerable to threats. Let’s look at the ways that we can save ourselves by not falling into scammers’ traps.
S.T.O.P Method: the stop method means when you look at an email, you’re going to ask yourself four questions:
S: Is this email suspicious?
T: Is it telling me to click a link?
O: Is it offering something amazing?
P: Is it pushing me to do something quickly
If we train ourselves to be a little more critical of the emails that are coming into our inbox, we will be in a much better position to not fall for many of these complex, very tricky email phishing scams.
• Suspicious activity: this includes inappropriate grammar in the email content. Contrastingly, big companies hire a professional copywriter and content specialist. They don’t make such grammatical errors. This is an indication that the sender might be fake.
• Additional links and buttons: if you see any links attached to the receiving email, never click on them immediately. It might be a scam, do not open it.
• Offering lottery: if you noticed any email with some lotteries or offering you a refund or money. This can be an indication of a fraud email.
• Sense of urgency: cybercriminals often create a sense of urgency or even make threats to force you to act randomly so you do not take time to closely look at the message.
So if you experience any email that requires your account passwords and asking for your credit information you must regard it as a scam.
Read next: Apple’s App Store users are way ahead of Google Play users in terms of spending subscription money