Phishing Attacks Are At Their Highest As Figures Quadruple From 2020, Claims New Study

A new study is highlighting figures related to phishing attacks and how they’re currently at their highest. When compared to those seen in the past, we’re talking about a massive jump, almost quadruple from before.

The news comes to us from the Anti-Phishing Group whose quarterly statistics presented some shocking findings with a sharp rise in BEC, vishing, smishing, and utilization of social media.

As you may already know, new data coming through that show a rise in such figures are alarming. Phishing attacks are upwards and shifting to the right and that’s never a good sign as revealed in the findings for Q2 of 2022. And as far as which phishing is on the rise, well, all forms of metrics are increasing.

In Q2, there were over a million attacks of phishing in total. It’s nearly quadrupled that observed each quarter as stats were compared in 2020. And then we had around 81,000 attacks getting reported each month.

The biggest jump was witnessed in June, one of the biggest highs ever. Moreover, the average BEC was stated to be above the $109,000 mark, and that’s a jump of 20% from Q1. Then threats arising from social media also grew by around 47% over that time.

There were rises in mobile fraud, with both smishing attacks and vishing rising by around 70% across Q1. And as experts claim, it’s bad, really bad.

So what’s the solution? Well, organizations that feel serious about putting an end to this threat require layered protection. A strategy that would entail DNS protection and those that keep your emails, endpoints, security, and web safe. A lot of training is needed in this regard to help better ward off threats and allow many to report them quickly.

Read next: Annual Cyber Attacks Targeting US Businesses Rise to 42
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Bill Gates Issues Warning On Political Polarization Across The US

Microsoft Founder and billionaire Bill Gates is sounding the alarm on the growing issues of political polarization across the US.

The renowned software developer and philanthropist is known for speaking about major issues like poverty and tons of illnesses via his charity. But at the moment, he might be entering a new direction.

Bill Gates was witnessed warning the US how the nation was heading toward an era of polarization in the world of US politics.

He admitted how this sort of behavior had the likelihood of bringing things down. We could soon be witnessing a form of civil war and hung election. Remember, the US Midterms are arriving soon and the anticipation is a lot.

The messages were delivered during a keynote speech during the recently held Forbes 400 Philanthropy Summit. And while the theme was philanthropy, the claims were quite interesting from the billionaire. He felt that although he didn’t carry any expertise in that regard, he simply wouldn’t divert any funds to combat polarization because he wouldn’t know how to spend them correctly.

He even took this moment to shed light on how the issues of political polarization go along with another major issue. And that’s related to misinformation. Carrying on with his chat at Forbes, Gates revealed how polarization and trust have turned into a mega issue.

He quoted a best-selling book through the hands of Robert Kennedy. And how making millions and killing people using vaccines really sold well, no matter how wild the thoughts may be.

In the recent past, the Microsoft founder’s former wife Melinda has teamed up with Gates and donated billions for the purpose of research development on different vaccines. This includes delivery via the foundation.

Bill Gates has been famous for being the center of great controversial theories. His claims of putting microchips inside vaccines so that people can be tracked are beyond people’s imagination. During the early parts of this month, Bill Gates mentioned how he’s been yelled at on the streets.

People prefer simple answers and the truth of the matter can be really boring for him at times. Moreover, anyone who gets great innovations on limiting polarization will understand that getting to the bottom of the truth and making it as insane as the crazy things in life would be worth it.

For this year, Bill Gates's reading list that was outlined in the summer included the likes of Ezra Klein’s ‘Why We’re Polarized.’

While being totally optimistic about the future, one thing really bothers the entire outlook. It includes the whole polarization situation of the US, and that really bothers Gates in terms of politics. This was written by the billionaire about all of his favorite books.

More was discussed at the Forbes keynote chat. Bill Gates mentioned more details about how he and his former wife Melinda are working hard to keep their charity foundation running. They’ve been successful at it for a while and hope to carry on for at least 25 more years. And the end goal is to beetle tackle infections that are proving to be a disaster for mankind.

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

During the Holiday season, Price of items is the biggest factor for most people

The holiday season along with being the season of festivities is also the season of gifts. This is the reason why many people have subscribed to retailers, but now they have complaints. According to a Optimotive's survey, a bit more than a quarter of consumers have said that for promotions they prefer Email. 38% have also said that an email related to the offer is more likely to grab their attention and get them interested.

Seeing brand offers on social media comes in a far second but, according to 21%, it is a good attention grabber. Promotional text messages are preferred by 12% and 13% label it as a ploy to successfully get their attention.

The Bad news however is that 48% of respondents do not trust advertisers or dealers online with their data like addresses or phone numbers. Amazon is trusted by 35%, but Facebook and Twitter are dangerously low with only 4 and 2% respectively.

Let us all be honest here, we all get irritated when we get advertisements for products we are not even interested in, and that is exactly what consumers are asking for; Relevant Ads.

According to the report, 32% of respondents said that they receive too many offers so relevancy is one of the most important points. 26% say that they ignore most of the offers that they receive. 30% say that they don’t mind if the offer is not made to perfection, it broadens their shopping horizons, and last but not least 12% say that they unsubscribe from any retailers who advertise irrelevant offers.

Out of the people who unsubscribe from brands 54% do it with 1 to 5 brands, 10% with 6 to 10 brands, and 5% unsubscribe from 10 or more brands. But the remaining 31% never unsubscribe from brands so they continue to give them messages all the time.

Loyalty, especially in the holiday season is the most important thing a company can have because it keeps bringing consumers with profits to their doorstep as 48% will do so this year. 52% however, will give new stores and brands a chance this year according to the survey. From the survey, it was also found that Price is the biggest factor that weighs in with 82% deeming it as their priority and service is one for 18% only.

Read next: Users Don’t Trust Social Media Platforms Anymore According to New Study
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Study Reveals Over 8 In 10 Of US Consumers Have Encountered Social Engineering Behavior Online

A study by NordVPN reveals that 84% of all US consumers have experienced some form or another of social engineering online, giving weight to the argument that cybercrime has gotten well out of hand.

Well, I for one am happy that NordVPN has found something else to do outside of sponsoring every existing YouTuber on the platform. Honestly though, pretty happy about the sponsorships, they enable me to keep watching my favorite content creators. Now, coming back to the story at hand, the headline “cybercrime is getting out of hand” won’t elicit anything more than a shrug or an indifferent nod. Honestly, we all are well acquainted with cybercriminals getting the better of online users through any manner of trickery and deception. Everyone knows about the grandma who decided to send a few bucks because the son of a Nigerian prince emailed her begging for assistance. However, I feel that what we fail to realize is just how much the art (ugh) of social engineering is evolving, and how an increasing number of individuals, many of whom are well acquainted with online spaces, are getting ensnared in the process.

For those individuals unaware, social engineering refers to any means of online crime and deception which involves tricking or manipulating users into harm’s way. This most often takes the form of phishing: a form of cybercrime where malicious actors will trick users into giving away personal information under the guise of appearing as legitimate handles or platforms. For example, a common form of phishing nowadays is users being sent links to faux social media platform login sites. Users type in their account details into a website that perfectly emulates its real social media counterpart, and thus gives away their account to malicious users.

My point is, the NordVPN research details that over 80% of the US populace has encountered such cybercrime, and 36% of these individuals fell for the attempts. They also lost access to accounts and even gave away sensitive credit card information in the process. That’s a surprising amount of individuals, and because they were able to accurately identify said attempts meant that there was at least some level of awareness with regards to phishing or other forms of social engineering. The problem isn’t that people are dumb enough to fall for cybercriminals, it’s that they’re getting smarter by the day.

Read next: Users Don’t Trust Social Media Platforms Anymore According to New Study
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

LinkedIn Ran Several ‘Large-Scale’ Experiments On Its Users ‘Secretly’ For Five Years

When it comes to finding jobs and making professional connections via a social platform, LinkedIn wins hands down.

The app is user-friendly, free of cost, and oh so effective in getting what you want in this competitive professional world. But new research is highlighting some shocking findings.

LinkedIn has been accused of running a series of experiments on its users for the past five years. And they’ve been undercover this whole time.

The study was stated to have analyzed a whopping 20 million users of the app and that’s when it was able to deduce how your acquaintances are a bigger source of help in finding the perfect job than your best buddies.

So many researchers are currently behind the study and they claim the findings are designed to enhance job mobility through the app. But while the news is positive, the fact that the app was taking part in such massive research and collecting data and then studying it really irked plenty of people. After all, transparency is the rage these days and if you don’t get that, well, it can be an issue.

This particular study was published in a journal called Science and it was carried out by top names on LinkedIn, M.I.T, and Harvard’s Business School too. The research was undertaken in 2015 and extended to 2019.

This study highlighted how several large-scale trials were carried out on the algorithm of the app called ‘People You May Know.’ For those who may not be aware, the feature is designed to suggest all sorts of new connections to its users here.

The practice is called A/B testing and the trials entailed providing users with some close and other not-so-close recommendations. These were again analyzed and all types of new jobs that were related to nearly 2 billion connections were studied in detail.

Researchers appeared to be busy testing an age-old theory in the world of science called the ‘strength of weak ties.’ Weak ties are usually found to be your friends while strong ties include your best colleagues or co-workers. And the results of the study found that weaker ties performed better in terms of providing users with the best work opportunities. Hence, it was great to see the LinkedIn experiment confirm the study.

Who knew your acquaintances were the ones that would really prove to be bigger assets in this world right?

The research really helped the researchers understand how such algorithms on apps can impact various chances of employment. So now, the app can better assist its members in getting the right job opportunities while achieving economic mobility.

Those who support privacy were recently seen speaking to The New York Times and claiming how about 20 million LinkedIn members aren’t going to be happy with the news that their data was used and being tracked by firms without any knowledge. But the app acted in a consistent manner.

For now, LinkedIn is yet to respond to queries on the matter but a new report claims the app has all the rights to utilize users’ data on a personal level because it’s outlined in its policy.

H/T: NYT

Read next: New Report Shares The Mind-Blowing Amount of Data Swirling On The Internet In One Minute
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Phishing Actors Are On The Rise And They’re Abusing LinkedIn’s ‘Smart Link’ Feature

Security researchers and threat analysts are going public with their concerns about how phishing actors are taking LinkedIn’s ‘Smart Link’ feature and abusing it.

These actors are doing this to get over users’ email security. Similarly, they are now able to redirect users to various phishing ages that end up stealing details related to payments.

In case you didn’t know, the Smart Link functionality of LinkedIn is designed for specific users of Sales Navigator and even Enterprise. They would enable a stack of around 15 documents to be sent out via a single link that could be tracked.

Meanwhile, in addition to being extremely versatile, they give people related to marketing the chance to gain better insights on analytics and produce reports about what’s being viewed and any shared content on the app and how long it can be viewed for.

So as you can see, these phishing actors aren’t just abusing the feature to bypass protections for your email. But they can also end up gaining more insight into the effectiveness of different campaigns and then optimizing any of their interests.

This particular trend of the feature could end up being spotted by some analysts located at Cofense. They’ve observed campaigns that target various people hailing from Slovakia by portraying themselves as postal servicemen.

These types of phishing emails are sent out to different targets and inform them about bogus needs like covering up costs linked to a parcel so it can be shipped on time.

Then, they use tricks like email header mimics so it looks totally real to any recipient. But if you really examine things better, it just becomes totally clear what the sender is trying to do and how he’s unrelated to any postal company or service provider.

Meanwhile, confirm buttons embedded onto screens have a special Smart Link URL attached, entailing some numerics and letters toward the end. This is done to redirect users to any phishing page.

This particular redirection functionality is located in Smart Links and can be used to market various ads and pages. However, threat actors are now using it for the wrong purpose and bypassing security checks.

For now, the costs for landings pages outlined are not high and so it makes the whole trap so much more believable at around 3 Euros. See, the goal is surely not money but to get a hold of sensitive details like credit card numbers, user names, and also the expiration date with CVV.

When a visitor falls into the trap, they add details and then press on submit. They get informed about how the payment has been done successfully and then redirected to any final code for SMS on the confirmation page. See, the sole purpose is to add legitimacy along the way so it's more believable.

For now, the campaign might be attacking those of Slovakian origin but it does not take time to spread to other areas. We do know about how tech experts have reached out to LinkedIn to discuss the serious matter and how it plans on issuing safeguards to stop the abuse.

Read next: Annual Cyber Attacks Targeting US Businesses Rise to 42
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

In Brazil and China consumers are spending the most on top games, report finds

When we hear gaming, the thing that generally comes to mind is a huge setup with 3 monitors RGB lights, and state-of-the-art CPUs, but what if we told you that Gaming isn’t necessarily all this extravaganza and at times all it needs is a good mobile phone and a working microphone.

Even though mobile gaming includes some of the biggest game franchises such as PUBG mobile and if we look at the global market then, it is very democratic. According to Data.ai’s intelligence, globally the games that come in the top ten constituted only 17% of the total market in mobile game consumer spending in the first half of 2022. In addition to that, 65% of the global market shares come from titles ranging from the ranks of 21 to 1000. This data gives us the idea that there is still hope for any newcomers in the market with lots of breathing space. While competition from other apps is still a huge factor it is not the one that decides the main value.

If we look at the regional results, they show that most of Europe and the United Kingdom also lean a bit towards the less popular games. As for the latter, the top games contribute only to 18%of the total consumer spending. This puts in the implication that for new and forthcoming titles there is a way to carve a place for them in the market shares despite them being out of the top 10.

However, in other places, there is a different story going on. In Brazil, 42% of the total consumer spending is in the top 10, and in China reaches 50%. If you are thinking of ever going into these markets some tools can help you overcome a lot of hurdles and correctly analyze and identify a lot of things.

But, hold on, if we talk about Sub-genres then it is not as hopeful looking as the regional ones. At the top is the Open World RPG and at the bottom is the Slot genre. In the Open World RPG genre, there is only one party up, Genshin Impact which leads with 100% consumer spending. On the other end, we are faced with Slots from where the top game only generates about 6% of consumer spending.

However, losing hope is not an option or even a possibility because there is a reason to be optimistic about both these two scenarios. As we said, the former is a very top-heavy market, and the con of this market is that when the users lose their interest in the given game or the hype dies down opportunity will automatically make its place in that particular market. As for the latter, it is the same a more dispersed market will lead to further and better opportunities for newer games to cement their place in the market.

Read next: Gaming Cyber Attacks Are On The Rise - But What Is At Risk?
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World