SOCIAL ENGINEERING
Social Engineering involves tricking people into breaking normal security procedures and providing confidential information. Through social engineering, attackers exploit a person’s natural inclination to trust instead of attempting to hack your software. Examples of social engineering techniques include the following:
Spoofing – Spoofing is when someone disguises an email address, sender name, phone number, or website URL—often just by changing one letter, symbol, or number—to convince you that you are interacting with a trusted source.
Phishing – Phishing schemes use spoofing techniques to lure you in and get you to take the bait. These scams are designed to trick you into giving information to criminals that they shouldn’t have access to.
Vishing – Vishing schemes involve using the telephone in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft.
Smishing – Smishing schemes involve using SMS (text) messaging as a way to scam the user into giving out private information that can be used for identity theft.
Pharming – Pharming scams happen when malicious code is installed on your computer to redirect you to fake websites.
