Phish Bytes – The fresh catch
Highlighted below are examples of texts, phone calls, and emails our employees have seen at work or in their personal lives. Click the Phish Bytes section to the right to see previous “catches”.
Catch of the week
Why is the above fake?
• If you work in an office setting, you would not receive an email from Microsoft regarding your account. Any email would be from your internal IT team.
• Look carefully at the sentence that says “upgrade now to avoid email issues.” Upgrade is not capitalized but yet it uses a period. Grammatically incorrect.
• For a home user, always go to the trusted website of your service provider and login with your credentials. No need to click on a link in the email when you know the correct website for your accounts.
Previous Catches
Why is the above fake?
• If you are in an office setting that labels emails if they come from an External Source, you need to be way automatically!
• Were you expecting this invoice from this person? If you have the slightest doubt, call a number for the company that published to check the authenticity. Do not call the number on the email.
• If you don’t normally handle invoice, be very skeptical and report the email to security.
Why is the above fake?
• Were you expecting an oil company proposal? Most people are NOT expecting an Oil Proposal and should therefore wither report it as phishing to their security team. If you receive this at home, delete the email.
• As mentioned before, an External stamp on your business email should make you automatically pause and think twice.
• If you work in an industry or profession where you might indeed receive an oil proposal, call a known source for the company in question to verify. Most likely you would not be receiving random proposals in your email without prior contact.
