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What is Spam?
Spam is unsolicited and unwanted harmless marketing or similar messages. They are sent to a large number of people, often through mailing lists, without malicious content. For example they may be trying to sell you a service.
- Spam emails are typically sent to a large number of recipients with the intention of promoting a product, service or idea. They are often annoying and may not necessarily be malicious.
- Spam emails often have generic or suspicious-looking sender addresses. They may come from a random assortment of characters or use free email services.
- Spam emails may contain promotional content, advertisements, or offers for products or services. They might also contain links to websites selling something.
- Spam emails do not usually contain urgent or threatening language. They are more focused on marketing
- Spam emails do not typically request personal information.
What is Phishing?
Phishing is when a cyber criminal tries to extract information, login credentials, or money from you by impersonating real people or companies through text messages, phone calls, email or social media.
- Phishing emails are more malicious in nature. They are designed to trick you into revealing sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, or other personal information.
- Phishing emails can sometimes have deceptive sender addresses that look very similar to legitimate ones. For example, "support@yourbank.com" might be replaced with "support@yourbank.co" or something similar.
- Phishing emails are designed to deceive you. They often contain urgent requests for personal information, alarming messages about your account being compromised, or offers that seem too good to be true. They typically contain links or attachments that lead to fake websites or malware.
- Phishing emails often use urgent language to create a sense of panic or fear. They may warn of consequences if you don't take immediate action.
- Phishing emails will often ask for sensitive information like passwords, Social Security numbers, credit card information, or other personal data.
Recognizing a Phishing attempt.
Phishing attempts come in different varieties but often have traits in common:
1. Urgency and Threats:
Attempt to create urgency or use scare tactics to get you to act. Asking you to immediately input password so your emails aren't deleted, or click here so you don't lose access to your bank account.
2. Sender's Address:
Pretending to be someone you know or trust. Phishing emails will try to pretend to be your IT team, your bank, a delivery service, your manager, or other reputable sources in an attempt to gain your trust. If you are unsure check the full FROM email address (not just the name provided), or reach out through other means such as calling the IT Service Desk at 705-566-8101 x7370, messaging your manager through Skype for Business, or going directly to your banks website rather than the link provided.
3. Financial Motive:
Request for funds, often in the form of gift cards. Legitimate organizations will not ask you to purchase gift cards, and Cambrian will not ask you to purchase gift cards using your own funds.
4. Request for Information:
Phishing emails will often ask for sensitive information like passwords, Social Security numbers, credit card information, or other personal data.
Other things to look out for are grammatical/spelling mistakes, discrepancies between the language of links and the URLs they direct to, highly emotional or charged language, unsolicited request to download an attachment, or claiming you have won a prize without knowing what or how you entered.
Cybercriminals are constantly evolving their tactics, so it's important to stay vigilant. Always be cautious about clicking on links or providing information in emails, especially if you didn't expect to receive them. If in doubt, contact the supposed sender through different channels to verify the email's legitimacy.
If you are not sure if something is phishing or not you are encouraged to reporting it using the "Report" button or by contacting the IT service desk.
