Digital Habits: 5 Simple Tips to Help Keep You and Your Information Safe Online by David Schropfer

Author:David Schropfer [Schropfer, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
Publisher: Something More Publishing
Published: 2016-07-17T22:00:00+00:00

This is one of the more difficult attacks to defeat, but it is worth it to modify your habits for this one. Remember, it takes about three seconds to check the name of your Wi-Fi connection, and it is an easy way to avoid an attack.

Digital Habit 4:

PHISHERMEN LIE

You get emails that promote lots of things, offer lots of things, and sometimes plea for help. They are all different versions of spam and phishing emails. Although there are many forms of this attack, the most common, by far, are emails with either the name of a website link that you are asked to click, or an attachment that you are asked to open. The content of the message will say anything, however outrageous or benign, just to get you to either click the link or open the attachment.

Here is a disturbing real-life example that happened in 2015. A colleague (we’ll call her Betty) received a text message from a friend she had known most of her life (we’ll call him Larry) that read, "I've got about half of the money together now and will wire it as soon as I get to the bank. Can you wait until tomorrow for the rest of it?"

The problem was, Betty never asked for money. A thief used malware that had infected Betty’s computer to send messages to specific people in Betty’s contact list without her knowledge. So, Larry got a message that seemed to be from Betty that said:

Larry you have to help me. Took a trip to Ghana, got mugged near hotel. Need $10,000 to get home. At Bank of Ghana now; please wire funds – wiring instructions attached. Very scared, please help!

Naturally Larry was alarmed, so he wrote a reply email that said:

Hang in there; running to broker’s office to liquidate, then to bank to wire the funds.

But, the thief had control of Betty’s email, so the thief was able to reply to Larry:

Thank you so much!

Thinking he had verified the message, Larry went to get the funds for Betty.

But then, Larry got lucky. He had stepped away from his computer to walk to his car so he could wire the money from his bank. But, by stepping away from his computer, Larry was forced to use his text message (not email) to give a status update while he was walking across the parking lot. By communicating with Betty via text message, and not via email which is how he received the original plea for help, there was a second mode of communication (text, not email) used, and of course, the thief did not have access to read or block messages from Betty’s text message account. Betty called Larry, and the attack was revealed.

To prevent this from happening to you is an easy fix; never trust an email that is requesting that you act in any way (Click this link, open this attachment, wire me money because I'm drowning in a swamp in Ghana). But, if you want to respond because

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