Spam versus Phishing

Cybercriminals have become quite savvy in their attempts to lure people in

and get you to click on a link or open an attachment.

​

Spam is usually defined as unsolicited commercial e-mail, often from someone trying to sell something. Spammers are not generally trying to get sensitive information from you, although they may try to elicit personal information to add to their database for future spam attempts. Spam messages account for 48.16 percent of email traffic worldwide. The most common types of spam email analyzed in 2017 were healthcare and dating spam. In 2018, 85 percent of email volume was spam.

​

​

Phishing is not limited to email. Other types of phishing include voice phishing, tabnabbing, SMS phishing, Evil Twins, link manipulation on websites and other social engineering techniques. In this article, we will focus on email phishing. This is most assuredly a malicious attack with the intent of luring a victim into disclosing personal (preferably financial) information, with a view to stealing their identity (e.g. passwords and user identification details), and their money.

​

Tabnabbing is a computer exploit and phishing attack, which persuades users to submit their login details and passwords to popular websites by impersonating those sites and convincing the user that the site is genuine.

​

An Evil Twin is a fraudulent Wi-Fi access point that appears to be legitimate but is set up to eavesdrop on wireless communications. The evil twin is the wireless LAN equivalent of the phishing scam.

​

This type of attack may be used to steal the passwords of unsuspecting users, either by monitoring their connections or by phishing, which involves setting up a fraudulent web site and luring people there.

​

It was found that 91 percent of cyberattacks start with a phish. A study by Symantec confirmed this, stating that 95 percent of all attacks on enterprise networks are the result of successful phishing or spearphishing.

​

​

​