According to GetAstra 3.4 billion phishing emails are sent out daily. That number could easily double in size, excluding text messages and phone calls. Phishing is the most common cybercrime as 36% of all data breaches involve phishing. It was estimated that in 2022 a phishing attack would be sent out every 11 seconds. The reason they are so common is that they can be distributed in many ways such as text messages, emails, and phone calls. Most phishing attacks will be formatted as something urgent and important to attempt to trick you into believing their links are safe. Amazon, Sharepoint, and Google have been common domains used to trick. However, YouTube has made its debut as hackers can use links to redirect victims to their own sites.
The most important thing is being able to identify these phishing attacks because as soon as you click on the link, hackers can access any important information on your device. Here are steps to identify phishing texts/emails/phone calls. 1. Do you know the number/email from which the phishing came (If you don’t chances are it’s a phishing attempt) 2. Make sure whatever they are saying directly affects you (e.g. they are talking about an Amazon account you don’t have) 3. If the information sounds exaggerated and with a suspicious link chances are it’s a phishing attack.
Being able to protect yourself from growing cyber crimes such as phishing can prevent having to do extra work such as shutting down your bank account since it has been compromised, rather than following instructions from a random email you received. If you have identified that the email/text/phone call was a phishing attack, delete it, ignore it (hang up if it’s a phone call) then move on with your life.
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