![]() The catch? Pay a small portion of the amount up front, or hand over bank account information and other identifying information so that the transfer can be made. The premise is simple: You get an email, and within the message, a Nigerian prince (or investor, or government official) offers you an opportunity for lucrative financial gain. The scam rose to prominence in the 1990s, and is referred to by the FBI as “Nigerian Letter” or “419” fraud. The Nigerian prince scam is one of the oldest scams on the internet. Duplicate accounts fish for personal information under the guise of intimacy. The trick was enough to convince one employee at Gimlet Media, which runs the everything-internet podcast “Reply All,” to open an email from his “coworker.” Except the sender was not his coworker, but a hacker attempting a work-sanctioned phishing test on the company's employees.įamiliarity fraud is an online tactic people have to be especially wary of on social media, where friends’ pictures and handles are rife for imitation. Recently, phishing has been weaponized to varying degrees of sophistication with a key technique: impersonation. ![]() The endgame is generally acquisition of personal information, like credit card and social security numbers.Īccording to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, nearly 100,000 attempts of phishing are reported each month worldwide. ![]() Phishing, when successful, tricks the user into unwittingly handing over their passwords to the scammer, often through professional-looking emails purporting to be from trustworthy businesses. In 2016, depending who you ask, phishing at most derailed Hillary Clinton's presidential bid, and at the least, revealed her campaign manager's delightful recipe for creamy risotto. One of the most widespread online scams is phishing. ![]()
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