Phishers Think Small
from the spreading-out dept
Phishing has never been that much of an issue for me, because most of the phishing emails I’ve received have been for big name banks, where I don’t have an account. The bank I do use is pretty small, which I figured made it highly unlikely to be a threat from phishers. Perhaps that assumption was wrong. Phishers have apparently tapped out the big name banks and are increasingly targeting lesser known banks and credit unions as they try to scoop up additional victims — especially from banks and credit unions (and their customers) who figured they were pretty much immune to the problem. We should have known better… It’s really a “security by obscurity” technique, like people who choose a less popular computing platform solely on the basis of “security,” when that security may only be because it’s less attractive to hackers. Of course, my second strategy in avoiding the problem probably has been working: I pretty much ignore all of the emails from my bank as they tend to just be “spam” marketing anyway.