Beware: Phishing Attacks Are More Aggressive and Devious than Ever

If you are at all familiar with the term Phishing, then you probably know what to look for when you are surfing the internet or opening email messages that look the least bit suspicious. For those that do not know what phishing is, we are here to warn you that it isn't some fun trip on a boat when you cast out a line with bait on the other end to catch a fish of some sort. The fact of the matter is, phishing is an act usually carried out by cybercrooks or hackers who attempt to gather sensitive information from you. Most times that information they attempt to acquire is your online account usernames, passwords or credit card details.

Phishing comes in many forms, most of the more common phishing methods are spread through spam email messages or online forms appearing from either a legitimate site that has been hacked or a site designed to mimic a well-known popular site, such as the one you use to access your banking account.

With the holiday season upon us, phishing attacks are thriving at new unprecedented levels. Additionally, phishing attacks have become more aggressive than ever feeding off of the naivety of computer and smartphone users who don't have the time to research whether a certain source of site is legitimate or not.

During the holidays, phishing takes on a new form where much of it is themed around Thanksgiving, black Friday shopping, Christmas gifts, New Year's celebrations and anything else in between. With the new creative techniques cybercrooks are using nowadays, identifying phishing schemes isn't so easy.

In the latest rash of phishing instances we have seen, cybercrook professionals are waging a new war by first knowing your line of business, your interests or your current projects. Phishing crooks don't waste their time exploiting products or services that you are not likely to use; they try to sell you common items that grant some instant payday. Instead, phishing schemes are now handcrafted. Cybercrooks are targeting folks who work for certain companies and will blast a company or department's emails with customized spam messages. They will perform research on certain entities to gather initial information about clients, customers and even befriend executives at companies only to gather just enough information to wage an attack on other employees.

It's all a game in the eyes of cybercrooks to attack people through phishing schemes. In the reality of it all, cybercrooks work from 9 to 5 just like everyone else. They know the structure of day-to-day work and they work hard to conjure up the next phishing tactic that usually catches victims off guard.

The method of spear phishing is part of a more sophisticated action of phishing out personal information from victims. Spear phishing involves the use of a familiar email address, usually one that matches an internal company sender where employees are not suspicious if the senders email uses the same domain as theirs.

The cases of spear phishing may appear to arrive from another employee's email, either because they have compromised someone's email inside of a company or the cybercrook is able to send fake email origination addresses from the outside. The most popular method today is to send fake emails originating from the outside through a clever method of clocking one's email server. Just think, you work for the company ABCXYZ.com and someone send you an email from Bob@ABCXYZ.com. You're more apt to clicking on that email and any links contained within it, which are links to either redirect you to a site to enter your personal details or a link that send you to a bogus site designed to look like one that you commonly use to enter a login and password for access to company effects.

Phishing is an old practice has only gotten stronger with age. Today's phishers are not what you expect, and you must pay special attention to any form that you enter personal information on to verify it is a legitimate source, including everything from your banking account login, to logging into Facebook or Twitter.