Phinancial Phishing

#cybersecurity #drcybereye #scam #spam #phishing

Hello. My name is Dr. CyberEye. I break down complicated cybersecurity stuff and explain it in a simple way to the average user.

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I have been seeing a recent uptick in phinancial phishing. (My colloquial term for phishing texts, emails or voicemails that come from purported financial institutions). In the past month, I have received several voicemails, phone calls and text messages from institutions wanting to solidify the details of the loan that I applied for. The problem with that? I never applied for a loan. Of course the first thing I did was check my credit report to see if there was any malicious activity there, but there was none. Not even a simple inquiry into my credit. Therefore, I reasoned this must be a new tactic that malicious actors are using to try to get you to divulge sensitive financial information in order to further their attack.

In addition to those types of texts, I also got the below text recently:

Let's break down the above text message piece by piece, shall we?

First, this text is supposedly from Fidelity Investments, a reputable financial institution. However, the first thing I noticed on this text was that they misspelled "Fiedlity" in the URL. In addition, it looks like this was sent as a group text to a number of additional people. If Fidelity truly sent this text (though they also mention on their website that they never send text messages) then they would have only sent this to me.

And finally, the biggest tell of all. The phone number. +55 is the country code for Brazil. For a U.S. based company, not likely they'd be sending the text from a Brazilian number.

What NOT to do?

DO NOT, I repeat, DO NOT click on the link in the text message. DO NOT reply back to the text, even if it is with a snarky remark. Bad actors often send phishing texts to random numbers without knowing if they are even active. When you reply to their text, then they know they have a live number and can continue to spam you. So what do you do instead? First, if you have any doubts at all whether this came from the financial institute it claims to be, GO TO THEIR WEBSITE. Go directly to their website and contact them directly utilizing contact details on their website. DO NOT respond to the text.

In addition, every smartphone has the ability to block certain numbers. Do it. If you receive the same type of message via email, you can do the same there as well.

Zero Trust.

As always, stay safe out there!

Dr. C