Like every day, the youngest son of the “Cybernaut” family arrived home after a full day of very intense classes at the university.
She left her things in her room, made herself some dinner and sat on the couch cambodia phone number data with her tablet to disconnect a little from her classes. Her routine used to be the same every day: turn on the tablet, watch some videos on YouTube, talk to her friends through her social networks, play some online game and check her emails.
Fake news used as bait
Our protagonist was then checking some emails and notifications when he noticed that one of them contained the following words: “Jack Pitt” and “Plane accident.” Apparently his favorite actor had suffered an accident. He knew that he was filming a movie in New Zealand, but could it be true? The news left him in shock; he couldn’t believe what he was reading. In addition, the body of the email did not go into much detail about how it all happened. To do so, he had to click on an attached link to find out the details.
Without thinking twice, he decided to click on the link to read the full story. He had to know how, when and where the accident had happened.
After clicking on the attached link, he was redirected to the login screen of a well-known social network. He entered his account username and password, but the website redirected him back to the login screen. After a brief moment of hesitation, he entered his details again and finally accessed the social network. To his surprise, there was no trace of the news item, it was simply on the main screen where he could see the latest updates from his contacts. It was then that he suspected that it was probably a fake news item of the kind that circulates on the Internet and is usually several years old. In any case, he decided to check other sources and confirm that it was indeed a rumour that had been circulating on the Internet for some time.
After the initial surprise and relief of hearing the news, she decided not to give it much importance and to continue with her day, just as she had planned. In the end, it was all a lie and nothing had happened... or had it?
What had really happened?
By entering his username and password on the social network, he had fallen into the cybercriminal's trap. The cybercriminal had created a fake website, very similar in appearance to a very famous social network on which the family's son had created an account.
The cybercriminal took advantage of our protagonist's lack of attention to pass off his website as the original social network and steal his account login details. Without realising it, he had fallen victim to a technique widely used by cybercriminals to obtain the login details and credentials of other users, known as phishing.
By impersonating other legitimate entities or websites that users trust, for example, a bank, a public entity or a social network, cybercriminals can obtain our personal and banking information. Although the most common way of spreading is via email, they can use instant messaging applications such as WhatsApp, SMS and social networks.
What information can they steal from us?
Using this technique, the cybercriminal is able to obtain the login credentials for our protagonist's social network, which in turn gives him access to all kinds of information about both the user and his contacts. However, this technique can allow him to steal a lot of valuable information, such as:
- Personal data : e-mail addresses, location and contact information, or even identity document numbers.
- Banking and financial information : Credit card or bank account numbers.
- Access credentials to social networks and email accounts.
