Can you spot the fake?

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Can you spot the fake?

Can you spot the fake? It might be harder than you think.

Once again Cyber Security hits the headlines. The majority of these Ransom Ware attacks get into your systems via email – so I thought we would have a little test to see how confident you would feel about rooting out those “Phishing Emails”. Have a look at the image below and pick the fake, for full marks and a gold star work out why before checking out the answer below.

 

fake1

Ok so they both look pretty innocuous, they don’t want your pin number or inside leg measurement and neither of them have a dreaded attachment.

The top email – the one pretending to be from Paypal is the fake – what you really need to know is why. Did you spot all the problems?

1. You are mentioned by name – This means nothing, phishers are doing this more and more, just having your name on there is not good enough any more.

2. Did you spot the spelling mistake “crdit” second line of the email?

3. Many big companies do provide you with instructions on how to do things, the instructions provided in this email are pretty useless and very vague.

4. The “Click Here to login” link – This is what’s known as a “Click Link” this is the hook line and sinker. You can’t see where this link is going to take you. It could be pointing to “www.myvirus.com” for all you know! More than likely it will point to a website that looks very much like the original, you type your username and password and voila they have your info!.

Ah you say, but the other email had links in it too! Yes it did, but they were “Copy and Paste” links, you could see the website address they were pointing you too. If you were unsure you could type that into your browser and know where on the web you were headed.

The other thing I would point out is the “You don’t need to do anything”. Most phishing emails are designed to instil you with a sense of purpose or urgency, “You need to do something now or everything will stop working!”

If in doubt take no action – delete it – check with the sender