Phishing scams: Watch out for these 4 tell-tale signs

The main reason why phishing is still a popular attack vector is because humans continue to be vulnerable, careless and naive. (Photo: tippapatt/Adobe Stock)

It’s fascinating that even in 2022, we are still discussing phishing, a scam technique that originated almost three decades ago. What’s worse, phishing is not slowing down. Microsoft reportedly blocked more than a whopping 35.7 billion phishing and malicious emails in 2021 alone. According to IBM, phishing was the top infection vector for 2021 and more than 40% of security incidents involved phishing.

The main reason why phishing is still a popular attack vector is because humans continue to be vulnerable, careless and naive. As a result, phishing aids attackers in bypassing security controls and securing a foot in the door. Traditional email scams were easy to identify — they tended to show generic salutations and obvious grammatical errors; they lacked sophisticated impersonation and often used generic domain names. Modern email scams are harder to spot; they are more targeted and personalized, appearing authentic to the untrained eye.