Check Point Says to Expect More Shipping and Delivery Phishing Emails This Season

With in-person shopping still considered “high risk”, online shopping with home delivery and the need to meet delivery deadlines creates the perfect scenario for scammers.

U.S. consumers are projected to spend more this year online than ever before. And that means more prospective phishing victims as well. According to Check Point’s security researchers, there has been a 427% increase in shipping-themed phishing emails across the U.S. in November alone.

The breakdown of shipping vendors impersonated includes:

• DHL (56%)
• Amazon (37%)
• Fedex (7%)

The emails, of course, use the story of some sort of delivery issue requiring the attention of the potential victim.

Many of these scams either direct the victim to a malicious attachment that likely uses the same tactic we saw in a recent scam pretending to be Windows Defender to enable malicious content. Other scams take victims to fake shipping vendor websites to trick victims out of personal information and, potentially, credit card details.

While most of these appear to be consumer-focused, it’s completely within the realm of possibility for these same scams to be sent to corporate email accounts, as organizations are still sending and receiving packages. Users need to be educated on this scam ASAP. Ideally, leveraging continual Security Awareness Training will better prepare users for phishing attacks using any themed scam.