Phone scams are a type of social engineering scam in which someone seek to trick often busy recipients into disclosing sensitive information or providing seemingly harmless responses to questions. This article reviews some of the common phone scams and provides recommendations and best practices.
Social Engineering
Phishing, Spear Phishing, and Whaling
Email has become the most common avenue for phishing scams, which use social engineering to take advantage of users. Variations of phishing, each with different characteristics, include spear phishing and whaling. Learn how to spot these emails and how you can avoid enabling them to steal your data.
Ransomware Scams
Ransomware tricks users into installing itself on their devices. Ransomware scams most commonly occur via email social engineering scams, a/k/a phishing scams. In ransomware attacks, malware encrypts a user’s files and requests ransom payment to unlock the files and restore encrypted content.
Social Engineering Attacks and How You Can Protect Yourself
You receive a phone call from your bank or from your IT department, requesting some information so a problem with your account can be cleared up. Only it turns out the call wasn’t from your bank at all. You’ve just experienced social engineering.
Watering Hole Attacks
Information security discussions are plagued with bad analogies, and none sounds stranger than a “watering hole attack,” which plays off the tactic in which predatory animals stalk food by waiting at a popular watering hole. Rather than hunt their prey, the predator will wait for the prey to come to it.