Reports of Scams Reach Over 21 million, Highlighting Urgent Need for Protection
In an alarming revelation, the number of reported phishing scams has soared to over 21 million as of June 2023. These scams have resulted in the removal of 133,000 fraudulent instances across 242,600 URLs, underscoring the magnitude of the cyber threat. Social engineering attacks, capitalizing on users’ lapses in decision-making, have become a favored technique employed by cybercriminals.
Phishing attacks heavily exploit the vast volume of emails sent daily, with over 300 billion emails transmitted globally each day. Shockingly, it is estimated that at least three billion of these emails are malicious phishing attempts. The term “phishing” first emerged in the mid-1990s when software tools like AOHell attempted to pilfer AOL user credentials.
The cost of phishing for large companies has been estimated at nearly $15 million per year, while the FBI reports that online attacks have collectively cost US businesses over $43 billion in recent years. Recognizing the signs of phishing becomes crucial in combating these attacks. Some common warning signs include unfamiliar greetings or tones, unsolicited messages, a sense of urgency, suspicious links or attachments, requests for personal information, inconsistencies in email addresses or links, unusual requests, and false alerts about winning something.
As soon as you recognize phishing signs, don’t reply to suspicious emails, report any concerns to your email provider, avoid sharing personal information, use strong passwords, keep your operating system up to date, avoid jailbroken devices, be careful with unknown links and attachments, and be wary of fake unsubscribes.
Implementing additional protective measures can further enhance your defenses against phishing attacks, including setting software updates to automatic, utilizing multi-factor authentication, employing email filtering, installing anti-phishing and account security tools, avoiding clicking on pop-up links, and refraining from connecting to public Wi-Fi hotspots without a VPN. You should be wary of email scams, spear phishing, trap phishing, angler phishing, whaling, voice phishing (vishing), text phishing (smishing), pharming, domain spoofing, social media phishing, clone phishing, and others.
It’s worth noting that even legitimate websites can be manipulated or imitated through watering hole phishing, pharming (DNS cache poisoning), typosquatting (URL hijacking), clickjacking, tabnabbing, HTTPS phishing, and evil twin attacks attempting to compromise your security.