I'm a bit concered that you clicked on that link again, but regardless...
Phishing is attempting to get someone to click on a link to get something out of them, often data or money (or both).
Phishing could be done in a variety of ways, but the most common are texts or emails where the scammer claims to be someone they are not.
Scammers have a wide array of tactics, but as mentioned above, they often try to impersonate someone, real or fake.
On top of this, they create a sense of importance and urgency, for example, a scammer may claim they are the MA lottery and that you won a million dollars and you have to claim it ASAP.
What the scammer is attempting to do there is remove your rational thinking because when you see that you won a million dollars and you need to redeem it soon, that will instantly become your only priority
This type of phishing can be used widely, as most people would love to win a million dollars, but the downside is that it is often very clear that it's false. For example, if I've never bought a lottery ticket, how could I win it?
A different type of phishing is Spear Phishing, which targets a specific individual based on information known about them.
As an example, most of our phishing emails we made at the start of the semester were spear phishing, targetting people based on their information.
An email sent out to all WHS accounts as Principal Braggs would be spear phishing, as most people likely would not respond or care about an email sent by a random principal, but people at the high school would be very attentive to see if there is new information that they will need to use for something.
The best way to prevent being phished is to be attentive, for example, an email trying to impersonate a company would likely try to have a similar username to said company, but they likely have a few extra numbers or letters, or maybe an i is replaced by an l.
It's always important to make sure that who claims to be behind the screen is legitamite, so make sure to verify any email from a major instituion.
Additionally, when your mouse is hovering over a link (at least on Chromebooks), the page the link is bringing you to will show up in the bottom left, meaning that even if the link in the email looks like words or a different link, the real link will show up there. If the link that appears is different from the link in the email, it's likely a scam.
I am interested in Phishing because it is something that affects so many people to such a large extent, and security can be broken with a simple click.
After all that, let's see if you've learned your lesson
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