Targeted phishing scam cons woman out of £50,000

A well-executed phishing scam has managed to dupe a woman from the UK out of £50,000 she was planning on using as a down payment for a new house, in what is a worrying reminder not to rely too heavily on Internet communications.

We often discuss phishing scams on this site. Those emails or messages sent out en mass masquerading as a (e.g.) bank/institute/social networking site that contain links to spoof websites in the hope that a number of recipients will click the link and enter their personal information into the spoof website, and thus unwittingly send those details straight to the scammer.

These scams are – by today’s standards – quite primitive and have a small success rate, and with a little education are easy to spot.

But targeted phishing scams – referred to as spearphishing – is a little different, and a lot more dangerous.

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Spearphishing scams are phishing scams that are directly tailored to dupe a specific victim or company. This usually involves a degree of research about the victim to ensure that the “first contact” will have a much higher chance of fooling the victim, by appearing to be something that they would be genuinely expecting to receive.

In the case of our story, this scam came in the disguise of an email from a solicitor. Vivian Gabb from the UK was buying her first house and was about to put in a down payment of nearly £50,000 when she received an email asking her to transfer the money into a different banking account than previously agreed.

The sender of the email knew Gabb by name, knew that she was buying a house, and even knew the exact amount that was to be paid. This makes the phishing scam extremely targeted, appearing to be a legitimate communication from her solicitor.

But it wasn’t her solicitor, but a scammer that somehow managed to extract information about Gabb’s financial dealings, possibly by somehow compromising her email account. And needless to say, the “new banking account” was actually the scammers account, and it was swiftly emptied by the scammer once the payment went through.

The story highlights a genuinely worrying aspect of doing business through the Internet, in that it doesn’t matter how much you educate yourself about your “typical” online scams, a perfectly crafted targeted scam can still catch out almost anyone.

Identifying these types of targeted scams can be incredibly difficult. Every day, more of our daily tasks are being performed over the Internet, and as Ms. Gabb will be all too aware, this can be very dangerous, especially when dealing with large transactions of money.

In these cases we always recommend speaking to people directly or at least over the phone using a trusted number (i.e. the number on the solicitor’s webpage) and if you do detect any suspicious online activity, always stick to the side of caution. On the Internet, there are rarely second chances.