By entering the 21st century, humanity took all of the previous technological progress. Unfortunately, cutting-edge inventions might both facilitate and worsen people’s lives simultaneously. One of the disadvantages of human development is called ‘cybercrime’ and refers to the traditional crime committed with the usage of computer technologies, usually with lucrative purposes (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-a). This report is aimed to explain the specific type of cybercrime: phishing. While analyzing phishing, it is crucial to specify that it is a link-clicking fraud with the purpose of confidential information reveal that is usually included in e-mails (Merriam-Webster, n.d.-b). In fact, ‘phishing’ occurs when fraudsters implement a specific link into a digital object, so by clicking on this object, a person will do further action without understanding that the cybercrime is already committed (Federal Trade Commission, 2022). For example, the digital object might be a photo, and when a phishing victim clicks on the image, they become redirected to a previously developed website, where further actions will lead to the personal information leak.
Many people and companies around the world are affected by phishing daily. More specifically, it is the most widespread type of cybercrime in the world, with over 241,342 victims across the globe in 2020 (Statista, 2021a). In terms of sectors distribution, the financial and commercial sector is mostly affected by phishing, so almost every fourth of this cybercrime is committed in this industry (Statista, 2021b). As a result, it is possible to determine that developing countries are the most probable victims of phishing due to their growing wealth in alignment with rules of internet usage neglection. Finally, fraud is expanding its scales every year mainly due to globalization and the growing number of people with access to the Internet.
There are numerous motives for people to engage in phishing. On the one hand, the human inability to think critically during the Internet that provides many possibilities to get ‘easy’ money. More specifically, most users of the online world have never received training for basic rules of online use, which include explaining how to protect against basic fraudulent schemes and how to recognize as yet unseen ones. Consequently, ‘phishers’ are seduced to deceive people without much effort and with as little risk of trespassing as possible because they don’t hack any software, but they lead people to give their own personal information to the scammers. As a result, ‘phishing’ is very difficult to prove in court as a crime.
On the other hand, phishers usually have profound knowledge in computer science and Internet function, but do not want to commit a direct cybercrime. In this case, it is much safer to develop a phishing scheme. Using the Internet, most people do not even think about the complex algorithms of its functioning, which gives the possibility to use some specific subtleties to steal personal data and users’ money. For example, by creating a “mirror” of the website, which has exactly the same appearance as some ‘normal’ website, phishers can get any information which is entered during the use of the website.
One example of phishing that happened in 2013 to the ‘big-tech’ companies Google and Facebook is analyzed to assure the evidence that any person or any entity might be frauded by such a simple and effective instrument. In 2013, Evaldas Rimasauskas, in collaboration with his colleagues, created a fictional company with the same identity as Google’s and Facebook’s one of the biggest service suppliers: Quanta Computer (Huddleston, 2019). More specifically, the fraudsters were sending multi-million-dollar invoices to the companies’ workers. As a result, the fraudsters received the employees’ confidential information and $100 million that was sent through the fake payment link, and both companies significantly enforced their financial department’s payment processing.
References
Federal Trade Commission. (2022). How to recognize and avoid phishing scams. Consumer Information. Web.
Huddleston, T. (2019). How this scammer used phishing emails to steal over $100 million from Google and Facebook. CNBC. Web.
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-a). Cybercrime. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Web.
Merriam-Webster. (n.d.-b). Phishing. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Web.
Statista. (2021a). Most commonly reported types of cybercrime 2020. Web.
Statista. (2021b). Phishing: most targeted industry sectors 2021. Web.