Recently, there has been a number of cyber crimes where ransomware (hackers have locked you out of your computer and demand you pay to unlock your computer for restored access) has shut down major health care organizations, city and county government organizations, and multiple businesses as well. During the 2016 US Presidential Election, the Democratic Party senior leadership information was compromised and multiple emails were shared with the public.Īll of these types of issues were the result of exploitation of phishing attacks. What usually happens is that scammers utilize social engineering ( the manipulation of people into sharing personal or confidential information) after looking at our Facebook pages, LinkedIn pages, or other forms of social media, learn about who we are and what we do, then attempt to take advantage of some type of human flaw and get us to divulge information that we wouldn't intentionally be willing to share. This weakness is the kindness in our hearts as people and desire to connect with the people around us. Exploitation of these friendly connections results in getting email addresses and other additional contact information. These scammers/hackers will send us a phone call, text message, or email. Within an email may be a web-link to provide easy access to a familiar webpage, but the scammer/hacker has adjusted the link to either redirect through their computers or send the information to a completely fake website that many people are fooled is the real thing (and they are really good at faking websites). It's even harder to confirm the right website on our mobile devices (iPhones, Androids, Fire tablets, etc). If we do put in our login information, the scammer/hacker will collect that information, lock us our of our own website or even worse, use that information to steal from our own other personal accounts (banking, credit, etc). This is made even worse because we need complex passwords to make cracking our passwords hard for other criminals, so in many cases people re-use complicated (or sometimes not so complicated) passwords. If we receive a text message with a link, it is just as bad as the email previously mentioned. If they call us, they will create some emergency that force us to react but if I didn't initiate the call, then it's NOT my emergency and it shouldn't be yours either-so don't fall for it.
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