Hello and welcome to the seventh podcast episode made by Ceiba Dick-Read, Max Alexandre and Gijs Mesman. In this episode, Gijs is host and introduces the topic of the digital scams, phishing, trustworthiness and how to protect ourselves online. Enjoy the listen!
Sources we used in the podcast:
Willard, Nancy. Cyber Savvy : Embracing Digital Safety and Civility, 2012.
I liked the subject of this podcast! We sometimes really do not realise how many bobbytraps there are on the internet! Like on instagram it is really well known that accounts get hacked and then pretend to be that person and then get more victims via messenger for instance. It is rather scary how easy these hackers can gain all of you personal information plus your banking info!
At my workplace, we do a lot of phishing attack trainings and tests to keep us on our toes and get practice in recognizing suspicious e-mails.
Sadly, there has been no test e-mail that has had no one fall for it, even the very obvious scams.
I think it’s already very hard to protect yourself as a person, but even more so as a company since there’s just so much to take into account.
These attacks also keep getting more difficult and more sophisticated so easily.
A recent test phishing attack at our workplace was an e-mail with a document that was a form to fill in our chosen Christmas gift and a link to supposedly a site with the available options, sent by an HR email account with our company’s domain name. It was also sent close to the date we usually get this announcement.
There were some obvious signs it was fake (like the quality of the text etc.), but that’s because it was made to train people to recognize these signs.
If this were a real phishing attack made by a party that has been working on it for months, it would have been very easy to make it convincing enough. Especially since you only need a few people to fall for it to make it work.
It’s definitely a scary thought!
Thank you for sharing your experience with us and thanks for the informative podcast 😀