Scam Of The Week: Phishing Moves To Smishing

Scott Starost • July 11, 2017

Internet bad guys are increasingly trying to circumvent your spam filters and instead are targeting your employees directly through their smartphone with Smishing attacks, which are hard to stop.

The practice has been around for a few years, but current new scams are mystery shopping invitations that start with a text, social engineering the victim to send an email to the scammers and then get roped into a shopping fraud.

These types of smishing attacks are also more and more used for Identity theft, bank account take-overs, or pressure employees into giving out personal or company confidential information. Fortune magazine has a new article about this , and they lead with a video made by USA Today which is great to send to your staff as a reminder. An Australian researcher also just published data to suggest cybercriminals are getting better results using the phone these days.

Obviously, an end-user who was trained to spot social engineering red flags  (PDF) would think twice before falling for these scams. The link goes to a complimentary job aid that you can print out and pin to your wall. Feel free to distribute this PDF to as many people as you can.

If you would like to learn more about how to best secure your office from threats like these give us a call at 760-454-0123 or client here to fill out our contact form.

Best Regards,

Scott Starost

President & CEO, SDTEK

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