Valentine’s Day-themed phishing campaigns are spiking, researchers at Check Point warn. There was a 29% increase in Valentine’s Day-related phishing domains last month, compared to a 6% increase in January 2020. The company saw more than 400 Valentine’s Day-themed phishing emails per week in January, and this number can be expected to increase as we approach the holiday.
The researchers say most of the phishing attacks are scams designed to trick people into paying for phony gifts.
“Most of the phishing scams are focused on buyer fraud, and in some cases have reused themes and webpages from past phishing campaigns,” Check Point says. “For example, we found an email pretending to be from Pandora that was similar to one that we saw being used in Black Friday related campaigns in November 2020. The email’s aim was, as usual, to entice the user into purchasing jewelry items by offering them at unreasonably cheap prices, on a fake Pandora webpage which tries to imitate the look and feel of the real site.”
Check Point says you can avoid falling for these scams by not clicking on links in promotional emails, and instead going directly to the retailer’s website via a search engine. The researchers recommend that organizations use a combination of technology and training to combat these attacks.
“Today’s phishing attacks can be extremely targeted,” they write. “They are usually well planned, and backed by a huge amount of research. To ensure they are successful, attackers spend a lot of time studying their prey. Phishing attacks leverage different attack vectors, but the most common one is email. Other common attack vectors are phishing sites and text messages usually aimed at stealing credentials to perform account takeovers. These can lead to devastating results such as data loss, fraudulent money transfers and more. As mentioned, since these attacks are specifically designed to exploit the human nature of wanting a good deal, it is extremely important to prevent these attacks from ever reaching their desired victims – because even the most vigilant and cyber-savvy amongst us can sometimes get fooled.”
In brief, the heart has its reasons that reason better take a closer look at. New-school security awareness training can give your employees a healthy sense of suspicion so they can recognize these scams.
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