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16 phishing scams that consumers need to be aware of in 2019

Introduction

Scams are as old as human society. There has, and likely always will be, an element of humanity that will try to take advantage of us all. The game of the phishing scam plays out every day in many forms. The digitization of our world only adds more ways the fraudster can use to trick us into handing over our hard-earned money or personal data.

Consumer phishing scams are a global problem. In the U.S., the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) received more than 1.4 million fraud reports in 2018. In 25% of those cases, money was lost, with the total being around $1.48 billion. This is an increase of 38% over 2017. In the UK, CIFAS (national anti-fraud body) collected a record of 305,564 scam reports in 2017.

Here we’ll look at 16 consumer phishing scams, but this list is by no means exhaustive. It is also worth noting that scams may be as old as the hills, but the ways and means of scamming folk are always changing. The only way to keep on top of phishing scams is to be security-aware.

Security Awareness

16 consumer phishing scams

1. Amazon Prime Day

Scammers get lucky phishing when they chose a topic that gets an automatic reaction. Exciting commercial offers from Amazon Prime Day is a typical brand email template that phishers use.

The Amazon Prime Day phishing scam coincides with the emails sent by the legitimate Amazon company about Prime member offers. The email is commonplace, as it uses a DIY system known as a phishing kit, making it easy for the average fraudster to create a phishing email. 

The phishing email contains a PDF attachment. Open the attachment and you are presented with links which, when clicked, take you to a spoof (Read more...)

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Infosec Resources authored by Susan Morrow. Read the original post at: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/infosecResources/~3/9A_pALJ8QYc/