Targeted fraud is booming, transforming into a well-established crime that pays better than ever.
Unlike spammers, scammers are criminals who study their victims and, with the right information, can trick them rather easily. Scammers have moved on from just using large-scale phishing attacks that expose a few vulnerable victims.
According to a study by ZapFraud, scammers are now starting to leverage new tools, so a single targeted email can yield far more than sending a million misdirected scam emails. Instant access to social media and readily available online databases serve these criminals, who know how to use personal data to gain the trust of victims. Today’s scams succeed because the sender knows enough about the victim to create a context that makes sense.
“The right context is the equivalent of shouting someone’s name to a crowd, instead of shouting ‘Hello,’” ZapFraud said. “Highly targeted emails make the victim feel that the sender knows them or has information they need or can use. The senders/ scammers create an atmosphere of familiarity that is acceptable to the targeted victims of the attack and encourages them to respond.”
Major data breaches contribute to the growing number of potential victims of the scammers, who are easy targets for phishing emails. The new scams—targeted attacks—appear to be much more credible and therefore increase their click-through rate by more than 200 times compared to non-targeted scams, according to Cisco.
