What is phishing?
What is a phishing attack and what are the dangers of a phishing attack? Criminals operate in a cunning way.
Phishing is a form of fraud in which criminals cunningly exploit victims' lack of awareness. The criminals' goal is to steal sensitive information or money in this way. Cybercriminals essentially cast a digital fishing line (in this case an email) to reel in your data. The classic form of phishing goes through email. A criminal poses as a legitimate company, friend, colleague, or agency in order to lure people into a trap. Often the email address actually appears to come from the legitimate company (through spoofing), but as soon as the link is opened, the website doesn't match the legitimate company.
Not only personal data can be stolen this way, but things like spyware and viruses also occur regularly.
Urgency
A phishing email often expects the victim to take some form of quick action. Because the victim doesn't have time to think calmly this way, they don't realize they're sharing data with the malicious website, and so their actual account is compromised at the same time.
2.5 million Dutch people
Figures from CBS show that 2.5 million Dutch people became victims of a phishing attack in 2021. So it's not just older people who fall for a phishing email, but especially people who aren't trained in recognizing this kind of phishing email.
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