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Digital Invitations Become The New Phishing Scam
Paperless phish // Image by Kait Cunniff with DALL-E
Fraudulent event invitations are becoming the latest phishing scam used by hackers.
Why It Hurts: The vast majority of people love getting invited to things, so using invitations for phishing scams is a new level of despicable… especially since they can set off a chain reaction of identity theft. Not a fun party.
Behind The Emails: Goodbye, Nigerian Prince. Hello, Paperless Post.
According to The NYT, these phishing emails resemble invitations sent via Evite, Paperless Post, and Punchbowl.
One scam involves what appears to be a dead link (it doesn’t open to anything), but clicking it actually “activates malware that runs silently as it gleans passwords and other bits of personal information.”
Another scam uses a link that leads to a page asking for your password — once you enter it, the hacker can gain full access to your digital identity.
Final Draft: Email-invite startups are aware of these scams and have been setting up a range of measures to combat them. For example, Paperless Post offers a forwarding address you can use to verify whether an email you’ve received is legit. Messages deemed suspicious are then passed along to the cybersecurity nonprofit Anti-Phishing Working Group, which works to shut down fraudulent links.
But these companies also want users to recognize the telltale signs of a suspicious invite — they may seem “random,” “generic,” or come from someone “you haven’t spoken to in 10 years.” In other words, if that one camp friend from 20 years ago suddenly sends you a birthday invite, delete that email straight away.
Next Scam: Maybe we’ll all just go back to inviting people the old-fashioned way — over a large, chaotic group text.
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.