Recently, security researchers have noticed a new wave of phishing attacks. The hackers behind phishing emails try to trick victims into giving up details their credit card passwords. or Some of these emails are very convincing. However, others are not at all careful, and that's a good thing, because they help users realize that something is wrong.
According to security firm Mimecast, the new phishing campaign uses emails that tell victims they are entitled to a tax refund. In this way, they try to convince victims to give up personal information, such as their name, address, phone number and credit card details.
This scam coincided with the filing of tax returns by citizens of the United Kingdom (they had a deadline until January 31). The hackers probably exploited this situation and thought of this particular trap.
According to Mimecast, this process is annoying for many people, ’ because of the pressure it is very likely to fall into such a trap.
The good news is that many phishing emails have some peculiarities and some grammatical errors that should catch the attention of users and make them more cautious about these. Spelling errors, names of government organizations that don’t sound quite right , and other issues in the email format should “ring a warning bell.” Phishing emails also come from unofficial email addresses. These are some signs that we should pay attention to whenever we receive a message from an unknown source.
However, some other emails are crafted very carefully, resulting in them being very persuasive.
“Unfortunately, whether good or bad, phishing attacks are effective and that’s why they continue to be popular,” said Carl Wearn, head of cybercrime at Mimecast.
“Any unexpected message from an organization asking for details (like those listed above) is suspicious. It is almost certainly an attempt by scammers to steal credentials through a seemingly genuine site,” he said, adding that when users are asked to enter their credentials on a site, they should first search for the site in the browser and not enter them in the one embedded in the email.
