Last month, there was a large-scale phishing attack on banks and credit unions according to the Federal Reserve Bank. Because of this, the US Department of Treasury restricted federal wire transfers. This news, of course, caused various people to panic. However, the news was actually a bogus one. There was no actual phishing attack the happened. Aside from this, the federal wire transfers worked smoothly. The news was actually a hoax, and a believable one.
What are the motives in perpetrating bogus news
There are various of reasons cyber criminals spread email hoaxes. For one, they enjoy the fact that they’ve created some sort of commotion. In the case of the hoax on Federal Reserve Bank, the purpose may be more serious than that. The cyber criminal or cyber organization responsible for this fraudulent mail may want to spread dangerous software. The bogus news update actually contains a link leading to a pornographic site that has a trojan malware.
How can you avoid hoax email
One of the first and most important steps that you should do to avoid hoax is to learn how to identify one. It is important that you keep a critical eye when reading controversial messages. It is also necessary that you avoid clicking the links in a site, especially if you are not certain whether the site is authentic or not. If you want to visit the site to verify information, it is best that you type the URL in the browser instead of clicking links. Through this, you can easily avoid the automatically installing malware.