Text and phone scams
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Criminals are now using Texts and phone calls to maliciously facilitate theft and fraud. Vishing calls are made to attempt to cause alarm to encourage recipients to make payments or provide financial information.
Smishing texts may additionally try to entice their target to click on malicious links allowing Trojans to steal passwords and other data.
Both Vishing (Phone Call Phishing) and Smishing (Text Phishing) are cheap, require only a little technical knowledge and can be high volume campaigns. Using auto dial and broadband criminals can contact thousands of potential victims per hour.
Both usually try to drive fear-based responses, for example contacting victims about bank fraud, then requesting detailed card information in response.
Smishing is becoming the more popular the growth of text banking together with the number of victims who are unused to receiving spam texts. Typically a spam text will request urgent action which often involves clicking on a malicious link that will enable data theft.
To avoid the risks raise awareness of the potential impact vishing or smishing, learn to spot suspicious texts and never be rushed into making a quick decision in response to an urgent request.
Don’t click on a link in a text you were not expecting.
- EDSQ Unit 5 LO 14.4