Lauren Weinstein on Nostr: Warning re massive increase in robocalls and dangerous phishing: Robocalls are seeing ...
Warning re massive increase in robocalls and dangerous phishing:
Robocalls are seeing a massive increase lately. Keep in mind that efforts to stop caller-ID spoofing have largely had no real effect, because callers now use "throw away" numbers that verify correctly and then are abandoned after days or even hours. In fact, if you get an "unknown caller" on your phone, it's likely NOT a spam call, because spammers can now so easily not bother spoofing or blocking their numbers, they just keep switching to different "legit" numbers that spam blocks usually don't detect.
Email phishing is on the rise, and much of it now is bypassing SPF and DKIM checks (that Google and other large mailers started requiring for bulk mailings) due to techniques such as DKIM replay and a range of other methods. Fake PayPal invoices are flooding the Net, and they often are passing those checks meant to block them. It's reported that many of these are coming from Microsoft's Outlook, with forged PayPal email addresses. Easiest way to detect these is to look at the phone number they want you to call if you have a question -- and if it's not the legit PayPal customer service number you know it's not really from PayPal. Getting you to call the scammers on the phone is the basis of the entire scheme.
It's all getting worse, not better.
L
Robocalls are seeing a massive increase lately. Keep in mind that efforts to stop caller-ID spoofing have largely had no real effect, because callers now use "throw away" numbers that verify correctly and then are abandoned after days or even hours. In fact, if you get an "unknown caller" on your phone, it's likely NOT a spam call, because spammers can now so easily not bother spoofing or blocking their numbers, they just keep switching to different "legit" numbers that spam blocks usually don't detect.
Email phishing is on the rise, and much of it now is bypassing SPF and DKIM checks (that Google and other large mailers started requiring for bulk mailings) due to techniques such as DKIM replay and a range of other methods. Fake PayPal invoices are flooding the Net, and they often are passing those checks meant to block them. It's reported that many of these are coming from Microsoft's Outlook, with forged PayPal email addresses. Easiest way to detect these is to look at the phone number they want you to call if you have a question -- and if it's not the legit PayPal customer service number you know it's not really from PayPal. Getting you to call the scammers on the phone is the basis of the entire scheme.
It's all getting worse, not better.
L