I imagine if you are reading this you have been online before. Maybe you are right now. Also, you may have suffered at the hands of some scammer. You may not have been hacked, had your bank account taken over, lost any money, or anything major, but tricked…most likely. Remember Prince Abooboo from Gondwana that emailed you a few years ago? He wanted to make you a millionaire if you would just help him?
The internet is a place where anyone can go to learn about anything. You can discover unknown places and things you have thought about. If you start a new hobby, you can find out all about it online. You can learn how to do it along with where to buy the supplies. Unfortunately, this also means that a nefarious person can trick or hack you for your personal information. We must be careful when online.
Cybersecurity is a never-ending battle. Every day, we hear about new ways hackers are attacking our personal and business information. One of the most common attacks is called “email phishing” which is characterized by something similar to the “Prince” above.
Email phishing is usually an email that you received which claims to be from a legitimate company. The logo looks good. It looks just like the actual organization sent you the email. There will also be an understood threat or request for information. For instance, it may state, “If you do not login to your account with this link in the next 10 hours, your bank account will be closed.” They just want you to click the fake link and give them your login information. “Voice phishing” is another one we have heard of before. It is like email phishing, but has the bad guy calling you on your phone. Here they try to talk you into revealing account information.
Have you been involved recently in “cloning?” You may have, but did not know what it was called. This is common today on Facebook. One of your “friends” on FB messages you and says something simple to you. Maybe they start with, “Hey what are you up to today? We haven’t talked in a while.” You may continue a conversation with an old friend. But it will be vague at times. You may ask them about someone and they may not remember them.
Then a few days later, you see your real “old friend” post on FB that their account has been hacked, and it is not them messaging or posting. This is cloning, which is easy. A bad person downloads pictures from anyone’s FB account and recreates it with that person’s actual friends. They then try to get information from the “friends.” They clone the FB account and just use another email address to set up the fake account. They are in!
Remember too, if a friend of yours on FB asks you to friend them again…it is not your friend since you are already friends with them. So do not re-friend them.
Last, today a newer one that you have most likely experience but not realized. “Smishing,” I bet you never thought you would hear or use that word before. Smishing is SMS Phishing. SMS stands for “Short Message Service” or texting by using your phone. It is almost identical to email phishing except they send you a text message. It can appear to be from a bank, your bank, a credit card company, etc. I kept the following that I got as an example:
WARNING:(Criminal Investigation Division) IRS is filing a lawsuit against you, for more information click here, https://tw.*****.gov.com. If you do not contact the I.R.S. within 24 hours, your arrest could be imminent and your assets will be frozen.
Pure bunk, and notice the different spelling of “IRS.” Also, check out the end of the URL, “.gov.com” trying to make you think it is from a government organization. The government, your bank, and most stores will not contact you like this. If you get one, look up the actual phone number for the organization and call them. Be safe by being smart everywhere.
