Dealing with fishy Messages
According to the article in Dark Reading, Study: Phishing Messages Elude Filters, Frequently Hit Untrained Users, many people are still being tripped up by phishing emails. The article summarizes the findings of a survey that was conducted at the Black Hat USA security conference held in July 2012. Of the 250 conference attendees that were polled, 69% said that phishing messages get past spam filters and into users’ inboxes on a weekly basis. Over 25% indicated that top executives and other highly privileged employees have been successful targets of phishing attacks. Many phishing messages aren’t difficult to spot, but if you don’t know what you are looking for you can easily get hooked. Filtering Software Can Help, But… Stated simply phishing messages are fraudulent attempts to obtain your personal information through email or social media messaging. Armed with your credit card numbers, bank account data or social media account information, the bad guys can steal m