We tell you how the new trend of identity theft and extortion works
Imagine that you receive an email on your mobile phone or computer, or a message through your instant messaging application, from which you are the sender. It will capture your attention immediately and it will be very difficult for you to resist the temptation to open it and click on the links, to see its content and reveal its origin.
This type of mailing, which may be headed by titles or references to conspicuous or urgent matters, and whose sender is the recipient himself, are a new type of ‘spoofing’, a cyberattack through identity theft, which is gaining popularity in Internet.
In this type of cyberattack, the fraudster poses as a trusted sender to access important data or information, through websites, emails, phone calls, texts, IP addresses and servers, they explain from the computer security firm Panda Security (PS).
The goal of identity theft is often to access personal information, steal money, bypass network access controls, or spread ‘malware’ (malicious programs) through infected attachments or links, according to PS (www.pandasecurity .com).
“Through the different possibilities of online communication, scammers will try to use ‘spoofing’ to try to steal your identity and assets,” explains Hervé Lambert, PS’s global consumer operations manager.
He points out that cybercriminals often impersonate a person or organization that the user trusts, in order to “let their guard down.”
In email spoofing, the scammer sends emails with fake sender addresses, which “appear to come from someone the user knows, such as a co-worker or friend.”