Phishing Attacks in Social Media ( Introduction)

      The term of phishing concept was going back as far as the early 1990s through America Online (AOL).  A group of hackers called themselves as warez community and impersonated AOL employees(Phishing,2017). The first method in which phishers carried attacks was done by using algorithms to constitute random credit card numbers to steal users’ passwords(Phishing,2017). However, it was put a stop to that types of those illegal activities by AOL in 1995 via innovative security measures in order to prevent the random illegal usage of credit card numbers( PHISHPROTECTION,2019). Nevertheless, at the present time, there is been divergences in phishing methods as the fraudulent are migrating to social media. According to Parker’s and Flowerday’s 2020 study (cited in ProofPoint,2018) demonstrates that there is a noticeable rise in phishing attempts in social media by 30% from the first quarter of 2018. The research project that I am carrying out this semester is going to determine the factors that lead to increase in the likelihood of being attacked by phishing on social media in particular, besides educating social media users about the riskiness of phishing attacks including criminals' purposes, as well as some techniques to protect users' accounts and maintain privacy. 

References:

PARKER, J. and FLOWERDAY, V (2020 Contributing factors to increased susceptibility to social media phishing attacks. South African Journal of Information Management. [Online] 22 (1). Available from: https://search-proquest-com.proxy.library.dmu.ac.uk/docview/2414201019/fulltext/DE3FF98FC4C747A1PQ/1?accountid=10472 [Accessed 30/04/2021].

 PHISHING (2017) History of Phishing. [Online] PHISHING. Available from: Phishing | History of Phishing [Accessed 30/04/2021].

 PHISHPROTECTION (2019) History of Phishing: How Phishing Attacks Evolved From Poorly Constructed Attempts To Highly Sophisticated Attacks. [Online]  PHISHPROTECTION. Available from: History of Phishing: How Phishing Attacks Evolved From Poorly Constructed Attempts To Highly Sophisticated Attacks | PhishProtection.com [Accessed 30/04/2021].