According to USA Today, hackers still prefer to hack your email over any other social profiles. People get more emails than texts or social media messages, and it’s easier to find someone’s email rather than their phone numbers. Also, its less expensive for hackers to send a fake email. Some services offer to send 50,000 emails for $65. The easiest trick for hackers to use is to send a fake business email. It’s super effective and people trust the email as it looks authentic. For example, in 2016, Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign was hacked. Her campaign manager believed that an email sent to him was genuine, and he clicked on a link. Because of that, all the campaign emails were leaked onto the Internet. Some companies are putting more emphasize on online security for their mobile devices, instead of laptops and desktops, as more employees are doing more work on their cell phones. Recently, the CEO of Amazon was hacked through his smartphone via a direct messaging app. Other companies are more concerned with hackers that ask for ransomware. They’re updating and improving their machines to stay ahead of potential hackers.
I find it extremely interesting that hackers still prefer to hack our emails instead of other social media platforms. My generation experiences a lot of social media attacks. I feel like I am constantly getting random messages on Facebook or Instagram telling me to click some random link. Then later, seeing the person who sent me the message, made a post about explaining to not click the link as they were hacked. I’m curious to see as time goes on, if Facebook or Instagram will become the most hacked social media. My generation uses those platforms more often, so as we get older, I wonder if hackers will change their ways.
Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/conferences/2020/02/26/email-top-target-phishing-attacks/4867371002/
Email is still the most efficient way for hackers to bait people and bait mass numbers of them. Social media phishing-type hacks are on the rise, yet they aren’t as prevalent as email scams. I feel as if social media scams have more of a potential to be spread easier if the correct people are targeted and the scam is at least somewhat believable. Social media has the advantage of things being shared quicker through stories, which could be detrimental to many people before it’s realized it is a scam. Also, Penn State has taken this into account while we are looking for jobs/internships. Through Nittany Lion Careers you can find jobs and internships facilitated by Penn State. Now at the top of the website and in a “What’s New” category, they have an announcement about job scams. “Think before you apply!” Scammers are now posing as companies and hoping you give them money or vital information before you even get interviewed!
Source: https://nittanylioncareers.psu.edu/
Penn State has been having serious issues with this across all student email accounts. I know for a fact that there have been at least 2 of these spam emails sent to many of us during this school year. Likewise, Penn State sends out test emails to try and educate students on the harm phishing can do to your personal information and security. The fact that many hackers use email instead of other forms of social media is probably because its one of the last forms of communication people expect to get these types of ploys from. And that there’s many older people that utilize email that probably do not know any better. The IT helpdesk here actually has a whole webpage that outlines what phishing is and how harmful it can be. It allows you to report spam and other dangerous email sources and provides the reader with certain safe guards to take so that these emails don’t take advantage of students.
Link: https://security.psu.edu/dont-take-the-bait/