We’ve all had those unsolicited emails promising us millions locked up in a foreign bank if only we could just give them our bank details. Or less charming ones offering us all kinds of other advantages, and texts telling us to pay extra postage to pick up an undelivered parcel.
Like all things, financial phishing has moved on fast and is now a highly sophisticated business. Emails can appear to come to you from a colleague’s email address, asking you to approve a funds transfer to pay an urgent supplier bill, or that your bank’s password has been updated and please will you click to authorise… The latest one apparently doing the rounds focus on new hires who have been announced on Linked in. Attackers look them up, send an email from a senior executive whose authority of course would be unknown to the new person, and ask for gift cards, log ins, or even confidential information.
Even highly tech-literate and phish-aware people with sophisticated systems can get caught. Share this great phish-detection quiz (5-10 mins) and see how well you do in recognising what’s real. The slightly suspicious url https://phishingquiz.withgoogle.com should raise alarms – but it is a 100% genuine Google project.
And the first step is to ‘enter your name and email’ – more alarm bells! They reassure you that it is safe and they only want these to merge them into a couple of questions later in the quiz, so you can see just how personal phishing can look. But make them up if you prefer (like Jane Doe and Jane.Doe@example.com), and it still works.
Cybercrime is a real, serious and growing threat to all businesses. Don’t be caught with a phish face! Find out how to get ahead of the game with our Skills Bootcamps – click here for more information