Spammers get better at pretending to be banks

As always, spammers and cybercriminals seek to take advantage of the peak online shopping season covering Black Friday and the Christmas holidays.

The Bitdefender Antispam Lab has identified a series of campaigns impersonating online banking and financial organizations. In October six in 10 emails (58.84 percent) relating to the banking industry were fraudulent.

And the spammers are getting better at making their messages look genuine. They're using real logos, specific layouts and even industry jargon. This makes it harder for recipients to notice the red flags that might indicate a message is fake, especially when accessing the message from a mobile device.

Spammers usually try to instill a sense of urgency by asking users to quickly either share personal or financial information, download a document or attachment, or click on links to resolve a security issue.

Bitdefender's Alina Bizga writes on the company's blog:

This past year has revealed that bad actors have honed their social engineering skills for maximum effect, tailoring their correspondence to fit every headline and the socio-economic environment shaped by the health crisis.

Every day, thousands of individuals fall for fraudulent emails from cybercriminals pretending to be a bank representative. On top of the financial loses that follow, users may also become victims of identity theft, and malware and ransomware infections that compromise their devices, privacy and well-being.

You can read more and see examples of some of the latest campaigns on the Bitdefender blog.

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