Goodbye PHISHING, Welcome VISHING

Goodbye PHISHING, Welcome VISHING

Yes, we need to bid adieu to PHISHING. Goodbye PHISHING, Welcome VISHING to borrow these pictures extracted from my banker's ALERTS today.  Indeed, while I may have heard of all the tons of tricks these fraudsters have up in their sleeves.  T'was the first time today I ever heard of the coined 'VISHING'.  Sounds scary, indeed.

For novices with all these jargons, let me enjoin you to, at the very least, understand what each of these jargons really mean.  WARDIALING sounds scary enough because the fraudulent automated messages could be emanating from even within the bank's infrastructure or from within the confines of a legitimate business. Remember Bangladesh when its central bank got hit with almost $1bn in that cyber heist?  And who were the brains and instigators?  Forensic investigators were led to 'digital footprints' and malware.

And how about fraudulent calls via VoIP [Voice over Internet Protocol]?  This is as scary as it can be because when it happens, it is cloaked by the legitimate calling number, and that could be any of the federal or state government numbers. Or, it could be the legitimate number of your financial services company.  Isn't that much scarier?  How can that happen?  Here it goes.  The network infrastructure of that legitimate organization was breached  so an external calling number will "PASS-THROUGH" the legitimate voice switch infrastructure of that organization, whew!

And how about CALLER ID SPOOFING?  It is that fraudulent practice of causing the telephone network to indicate to the receiver of the call the originator of the fraudulent call is a legitimate one.  What happens when you receive a call purportedly from IRS?  Of course you'll pick it up because that's the TAX MAN, right?  Not until, in the post-mortem, you'll realize that you got caught by CALLER ID SPOOFING !  Frankly, I have been receiving CALLER ID SPOOFING calls, probably averaging once a month.  How do I handle it?  I simply ignore and refused to pick up the call.  In short, NOT IN YOUR PHONE BOOK means I got to be registered in your phone book first.

Now, how about DUMPSTER DIVING?  Sounds funny but this is happening everywhere.  Fraudster will literally scour the trash and garbage, scouring for documents like credit card SOA's, bank SOA's and to the wantonly careless, they even dump a damaged ATM or credit card, oblivious that those card numbers [and your full name] is all what they need to replicate and clone such cards.  Hey dude, to be FOREWARNED is to be FOREARMED✅✅✅