Top 4 Popular Phishing Examples Most People Would Fall For

Phishing attacks have become more and more creative, subtle, and harder to tell from the real deal. The bad guys never sleep, but neither do your employees when equipped with shatterproof knowledge to spot their sneaky attacks.

Keep reading to learn about the 4 most widespread phishing examples and how to read through the red flags in an otherwise concerningly legit-looking email that could fool the best of us if unprepared.

4 Phishing Examples Your Employees Should Learn About

1. Classic Phishing Emails

Technical Support Frauds — With technology advancements and the increasing number of activities relocated online, service providers were faced with the necessity to step up their security game. This involved notifying their customers regarding unusual or worrisome activity on their users’ accounts.

It’s not much of a surprise that hackers are leveraging this to trick victims into giving away their credentials and, unknowingly, their money. While grammar that leaves much to be desired and poor design are a dead giveaway in some cases, there are phishing emails that look legitimate enough to trick the user.

A good example is this fake PayPal security warning below claiming to have detected “unusual login activities”:

Now, if you look closely at the address, you’ll notice it’s fake, but hackers bet on the sense of urgency when prompting their victims to take action. If the target accesses the links, they will be redirected to a credential-stealing website.

Another example is this fake Microsoft notice that closely resembles an actual notice from Microsoft:

The latter has a different approach, pointing users to a sketchy 1–800 phone number instead of kicking them to a credentials phish.

2. Infected Attachments

HTML Attachments — While malicious .HTML attachments aren’t as commonly used by hackers as .EXE or .DOC file attachments, they are desirable for a series of reasons. Firstly, antivirus software programs have a low chance to detect them since these files aren’t commonly associated with attacks carried out via email.

Secondly, banks and other financial institutions frequently use .HTML attachments which is why most people are used to seeing them in their inboxes. Check out the phishing example on the left to understand what we’re talking about 👈.

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