- E-Mail
E-mail are widely used for the information exchange . Hence it is a major way by which social engineering can be done. An Attacker can send malicious files like Trojans or viruses and which can exploit the target . Generally spammers send infected emails or email containing infected files to the target. Once the target open the mail or attachment , virus or Trojan associated with it gets executed into the system of target and remotely spying the target system . Hence the attacker can gain the information of target from target’s system. - Ads and Pop-up screen
While surfing over internet , user generally sees some sort of ads like discount on cloths or mobiles . There are some strategies which are used to make user fool and gain their personal information. Usually the ads are related to recent search history of the user because of the tracking by search engine , websites and internet services provider .
While downloading or visiting a website , sometimes pop-up window occurs showing some interesting things which attract the user to follow the pop-up and ultimately they end up with giving their information to the attacker . More or less , again there is a huge chance of identify theft . Data collected is generally sold out at higher prices and this data is misused. - Phishing
Phishing is one of the oldest but working techniques of social engineering. In the phishing generally an attacker creates a fake webpage or fake login page which looks exactly same as the original page . Now, once the page is made the attacker targets a user and manipulates him to login on that. Once user logins , his credentials are recorded into the attackers database.
Now a days , phishing has been extended . Phishing can be done by making fake pages , by fake e-mail or fake applications which resembles to the original one.
Phishing can easily identified by checking the URL . The phishing link will contain the url which will not resemble to the original URL . Although users generally don’t pay off much attention to this and easily gets victimised of it.
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