FBI Director Nearly Falls for Phishing Attack

Phishing attacks are a type of internet fraud where the perpetrator pretends to be a bank or other service provider to lure an unknowing victim into entering their credentials, giving up the keys to the real account. With the right awareness phishing attacks are easy to avoid, but it seems like FBI Director Robert Mueller did not get the memo.

While speaking at the San Francisco’s Commonwealth Club the head of the FBI revealed that not only was he “just a few clicks away from falling into a classic Internet phishing scam” but that his wife now has banned him from internet banking. Mr. Mueller said that the email he received perfectly mimicked actual correspondence from his bank. The email instructed him to “verify some information”, a classical phishing form.

Phishing has been on a spectacular rise recently with over 30,000 email accounts being exposed by one such attack. To avoid becoming a victim, never reply to an email with your secret credentials or follow links in email asking you to ‘verify’ data. Navigate to the site in question through typing the URL or from a saved bookmark instead – that way you know you are at the real site and not something that just mimics its design and address.