Alluring and attractive offers are the traps of phishing

 

From the very beginning of human creation, a class of humanoid deceivers has been walking alongside ordinary people. For ages, their purpose was to satisfy their interests by deceiving others. As people's lives have become easier due to the internet, the whole world has come within reach. At the same time, as the number of these dishonest people has increased in the cyber world, their cheating strategies have also increased. They are putting people's lives in an uncomfortable state by using modern technology to get new fraud traps. According to Data Portal, 5.03 billion people are connected to the cyber world in one way or another, which is about 63.1 percent of the total population. This large population conducts almost all their personal, financial, and other activities through cyber devices. As a result, it becomes easy for the dishonest or fraudulent class to grab all their information. In the automated world, they have invented new ways to steal important information from people. One of these methods is phishing. Phishing is an English word; it was first used in 1966. With the meaning of fishing, an unprecedented relationship can be seen. In the same way that we fool the fish by throwing bait, fraudsters take control of the users and rob them of important information.

The purpose of phishing is to steal all the information including personal information, credit card information, and control of social media from someone by showing greed through fraud. Hackers mainly use different types of phishing methods to hack social media sites. As an example, 1. Phone Phishing - It is often seen that fraudsters impersonate themselves as officials or employees of a particular company and then ask for the user's account number along with the PIN to verify the user's development, bank, or money transaction account. Sometimes, by calling from the landline, common people are shown various attractive offers and asked to log in to the user account by entering the PIN sent to them. These are all phishing attacks. 2. Mail Phishing- It is often seen that some tempting emails come in the spam section of the mail. There are some links attached to the mail and it is written in the body of the mail that if you click on the link, you will get the reward. Many times, in the body of the mail it is written that I want to help the helpless people of your country. Kindly reply with your bank account, Bikash, or WhatsApp number. 3. Link Modification Phishing - Generally, hacker groups present attractive offers by slightly modifying the links of popular websites. For example, hackers slightly change the link 'www.facebook.com' to 'www.faceboook.com' or 'www.facebok.com' or 'www.faceb00k.com' and keep its interface as real Facebook. Usually, people don't catch it as a fake at first glance and try to log in with username and password. By doing this, hackers control the users and do various types of damage to them. It should be noted that due to the free movement of people on social media, hacker groups are using this method more.

Everyday hacker groups are stealing information through various interesting and tempting methods of phishing. Often there is a link on Messenger or WhatsApp that says it is a Justified Apps or Game link. If you install these apps or pass 2/3 steps of the game, you will get flight tickets, movie tickets, etc. for traveling abroad. The serious thing is that the most common phishing method used by hackers to hack the ID of the youth is to send different types of links. By sending a link on social media, open the link to see your friend's bad deed picture. And our youth step into this trap without realizing it. Again, in the case of girls' ID hacking, it is said that some bad pictures of you have been uploaded on the following website. As soon as they get such a message, many people quickly open the link out of fear. By doing this, hackers easily take the user's information into their database. Also, hackers invite you to open a fake link to earn 100$, 500$ per day. As soon as the link is clicked, the fake or duplicate site opens, which is exactly like the original site. Whenever someone continues to provide information, the fraudster gains their trust and steals information from the account. Fraudsters are constantly deceiving through this type of phishing. According to CSO Online, 80% of hacks are done through phishing and 9 out of 10 people fall for phishing.

In such a situation, it is very important to protect ourselves from phishing. Before entering any link, it should be verified and entered. It is better not to accept friend requests from strangers on social media. However, no link provided in the message or shared link can be clicked without confirmation. You must be sure before opening the emails that come in the spam section of the mail. The next step should be taken after verifying anything and there is no substitute for awareness.

Md. Alamgir Hossain is Senior Lecturer,Dept. of CSE, Prime University