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Online social engineering is when scammers emotionally manipulate you into handing over personal information. They take advantage of human behaviour and trick you into thinking they are the real deal.
Find below how to be able to protect yourself against such malicious acts.
- Never reveal passwords or PINs via email or phone, no matter how legitimate the request seems. Legal company will never ask you for your passwords these way instead will sent you a number to confirm number and reset password.
- Call them Back. If you receive a call from a company requesting sensitive information, ask for their full details (name) and call back on the number from their website.
- Resist the urge to click on suspicious links from anyone, even if you think you know them – always double check web address first. It could be the case that you best friend or brother go infected and scammers attempt to get your details as well.
- Think twice. If something sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Even if it looks and sounds like it’s coming from a reputable source.
What forms does social engineering scammers use:
- Phishing, Smishing, Vishing : Contact through emails, SMS and phone calls i.e. they might do this pretending to be your bank. If it’s legitimate, a company will let you contact them using official company channels. Another way is to use programs that recognise the number of the call. Some companies have such service pre-installed.
- Capturing curiosity: “Curiosity kill the cat” they say, which is probably true as human nature evolves through curiosity but scammers take advantage of that. An example of such incident will the use of an abandoned USB stick and apply it into your computer.
- Quid pro quo: Quite often, scammers will offer you something like technical assistance, access to a protected document, or a solution for a problem. They may not ask for money! their goal is your login details, which they can then use or sell.
- Pretexting: This is when a hacker gathers info on you in order to gain your trust. One way is impersonating someone from your workplace and requesting changes to payments. This one commonly targets finance teams and is often successful.
If you want more information to protect yourself or even consult again your own services do contact us for an evaluation (www.maneidr.com). Further reading can be done on malwaretips.com, securewordexpo.com, AVG antivirus.
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