GET THE ELECTRONIC INVENTORS STARTUP KIT
Phishing – the act of attempting to acquire sensitive,
confidential or security information by pretending to be a trustworthy entity
in an electronic communication. It is becoming more and more sophisticated and
thus imperative that we re-educate ourselves to ensure we all become aware of
how to detect phishing attempts and avoid being a victim.
The
act of phishing involves the following stages:
·
Planning:
The Phisher
decides which business to target and determines how to get e-mail addresses for
the customers of that business.
·
Setup: The Phisher creates methods for delivering the
message and collecting the data. Most often, this involves e-mail addresses and
a Web page.
·
Attack: The phisher sends a phony message that appears to be
from a reputable source.
·
Collection: The Phisher records and collect the information
victims enter into Web pages or popup windows.
·
Identity
Theft and Fraud: The
phisher uses the information gathered to make illegal purchases or otherwise
commit fraud.
Two
common techniques of Phishing are:
Link
Manipulation: this is a
form of technical deception that makes a link appear to belong to the spoofed
organization. For example, see two links below – purportedly
from GTB Plc and FEDEX:
If
you move your cursor over the link without clicking on it the real link
is displayed as shown below:
Website
Forgery: this deception
makes a fake website to appear as that of the spoofed organizations. The url in
the example above takes you to a fake website that appears like that of GTB.
Of
recent, it has been observed that many people have received mails
supposedly from GTB, First Bank, Fedex, and other
financial institutions.
Please
note that financial Institutions will never e-mail or telephone customers to
ask for their account number or other personal or security details. If you
receive an e-mail claiming to come from your financial Institution, requesting
personal account information, do not provide the details. You should never give
your account, security or personal details in response to unsolicited
communications claiming to be from any financial institution. Also if you
receive any email from other institutions you do not have an account with,
kindly disregard and delete.
In
conclusion, please note that the use of your company provided email address in
online social sites, newsgroups, forums and other online activities exposes
your email address and the domain name to persons with malicious intents
(email harvesting spammers).
whenever in doubt, we encourage you to avoid clicking
on any suspiciously looking link and/or open any such email(s); kindly contact
the IT Service Desk immediately.
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