<< Prev. Page: Beware of Phishing Emails
User Vigilance
Mostly the advertorial emails are sent with an unsubscribe link, but that could be a trick, which directs you to a webpage with hidden form fields, that may collect cookies data automatically. Hackers already have some information, and rest they collect cunningly.
You may wonder how these cyber-criminals come to know about your email id, which you shared only to a selected number of people. They use software that mine search-engine, social media accounts listing websites, corporate, club, or courier websites.
Search your details in Google enclosed within the double quotes and find out which sites share your details. These sites are the source of primary data for hackers. Your email gets added to the list of email marketing campaigns. The cyber-criminals sells such file online with real email ids for a price. So, from now, be cautious while sharing your details. Ensure that they are not going to sell your data and keep it secret.
Some people maintain different email accounts for various purposes like for bank and other financial or confidential emails, for social media accounts and other for non-critical things like newsletters, promo-codes, signups to webinars, or music websites.
Spoofing Legitimated Websites
The hackers create websites similar to real ones for a bank or other financial institution or email sites like Gmail, Offic365, Yahoo, Dropbox, or Microsoft. He/she may also trick the website name by include number or dashes ‘-‘ like ‘6 for b, 0 for o, vv for w'. and many more. The phishing email would ask you to visit such a website and then enter the credentials to access the system. Once the hacker gains the access details, he/she can use it illegal or fraudulent activities like funds transfer, purchases, or other malicious purposes.
Botnet
Some malicious scripts run in the background of the system, and hackers use such infected machines to conduct illegal activities. The hackers can control the operation and use it further for various malicious activities like hacking, sending phishing emails, running pornography, stealing other's account details, cryptocurrency mining, mount DDoS attacks , code execution and a lot of different things.
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