Major Phishing Cases Point Out Companies' Customer Service Vulnerability
In the past year we have seen a large increase in the number of phishing attacks that are occurring and today it is not only small companies which have been used by people to carry out these fraudulent acts. Even some of the most well known companies on the Internet today have now become victims of phishing including such companies as eBay, PayPal and Amazon. In this article we will be taking a closer look at one of the major phishing cases that have been reported about in recent months.
One of the biggest phishing cases to come to light in recent months concerns PayPal. In this latest kind of phishing attack, an email has been sent to people who use PayPal which then asks them to call a telephone number shown within it. Once they ring this number, they are then requested to provide their credit card details in order to get their account verified.
The difference between this phishing scam and others that have taken place previously is that when you look at the email sent it contains no internet link or a response address. What in fact they ask is that the person contacts PayPal immediately in order to get their details verified. If a person does decide to ring the number that is contained within the email, they are then greeted by an automated voice which says “Welcome to Account Verification. Please type in your 16 digit card number”.
The biggest problem with this particular scam is that although the actual phone number provided on the email is in America, because so many people around the globe actually have dealings with PayPal, then they could be tricked as well into passing on this information to the phisher as well. But these scams are now highlighting many problems for those companies who now deal with their customers online and how they communicate with them. Today we are all being made aware of the risks that we face if we choose to click on an link in an unsolicited email that we receive, but no big reference as yet has been made to the dangers posed by those emails that only ask you to call a particular telephone number instead. Therefore when it comes to major phishing cases such as the one mentioned above then people need to be made more aware of the inherent dangers relating to these types of scams. In fact everyone should become more aware of the various different types of phishing scams that are now taking place on the internet and learning of ways of preventing themselves from becoming another victim.
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