Slide show

Phishing

• Similar to blagging, a phishing email will ask a person to send personal details, but pretends to be from a business. They can often look convincing, but may contain spelling errors or URLs that do not match the business's website.
• When a person clicks on these links and logs in, it sends their username and password to someone who will use it to access their real accounts. This information might be used to steal a person’s money or identity, or the email may contain malware.
• Banks will never send emails asking for personal information or usernames and passwords. If someone receives an email that they think might be phishing, they should report it to the business the sender is claiming to be.

Blagging

• Blagging is when someone makes up a story to gain a person’s interest and uses this to encourage them to give away information about themselves, or even send money.
• For example, a person may receive an email that appears to be from a friend telling them that they’re in trouble and asking them to send money.

Shouldering

• This is the simplest form of taking personal details. Shouldering is looking at someone’s information over their shoulder, for example looking at someone enter their PIN in a shop or at a cashpoint.
• A person can prevent this by using their hand to cover the keypad as they type their PIN, or being aware of people around them when typing in PINs. Software helps protect against shouldering by masking what is typed, showing an asterisk on the screen instead of the symbol that was entered.

Pharming

• Pharming is a type of cyberattack that redirects a user from a genuine website to a fake one. The fake website will often look like the genuine one. When a person logs in, it sends their username and password to someone who will use it to access their real accounts.
• There are several ways that a pharming cyberattack can redirect traffic from a genuine website to a fake one. One example is if the Domain Name Servers (DNS) of the website, which match the website address with the IP address of the webserver, are hacked and the IP address is changed to become the address of the pharming site.

Social Engineering

• Social engineering is the art of manipulating people so they give up confidential information. The types of information these criminals are seeking can vary, but when individuals are targeted the criminals are usually trying to trick you into giving them your passwords or bank information, or access your computer to secretly install malicious software–that will give them access to your passwords and bank information as well as giving them control over your computer.
• Criminals use social engineering tactics because it is usually easier to exploit your natural inclination to trust than it is to discover ways to hack your software. For example, it is much easier to fool someone into giving you their password than it is for you to try hacking their password (unless the password is really weak).