Key things you didn't know about phishing
Phishing is one of the most common forms of cyberattack, fooling people into thinking they're dealing with a trusted organization in order to get them to part with credentials.
But what are the hallmarks of a phishing attack? Atlas VPN has collected some phishy statistics to find out.
It finds that nearly 70 percent of phishers leave the subject line of the email blank, so this should be something that rings alarm bells when you receive an unexpected message. When a subject is used it usually tries to instill a sense of urgency, for example 'Fax Delivery Report' (used in nine percent of cases), 'New Voice Message' (3.5 percent), 'Urgent request' (two percent), and 'Order Confirmation' (two percent).
Business social media site LinkedIn is a popular lure, used in 52 percent of phishing scams worldwide -- a 44 percent jump from eight percent in the first quarter of this year. This is the first time a social media brand has outranked tech giants like Apple, Google, and Microsoft as a phishers' favorite.
Cryptocurrency is another tempting target, Blockchain.com being the most spoofed crypto brand, with 662 phishing websites in the 90 days up to June 22, 2022. Crypto investing app Luno is the second on the list with 277 phishing pages, followed by proof-of-stake blockchain platform Cardano with 191.
Amazon is the most frequently impersonated of all the retail brands, with over 1,633 suspicious sites detected to July 12, 2022 thanks to phishers keen to cash in on interest in Prime Day.
You can find out more on the Atlas VPN blog.
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