Tag

Phishing Awareness

Phishing awareness articles teach readers to identify and avoid phishing attacks across email, SMS, voice calls, and social media. Content includes real-world phishing examples, red flags to watch for, reporting procedures, and tips for running phishing simulation campaigns.

posts

Phish Food

Phish Food: What Makes Employees Easy Targets

Your Employees Are Phish Food — And Threat Actors Know It In March 2025, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) released its 2024 annual report showing over $16 billion in reported cybercrime losses — the highest figure ever recorded. Phishing and its variants topped the list of complaint types

Carl B. Johnson Dec 13, 2025 7 min read
Fake Emails

Fake Emails: How to Spot Them Before They Cost You

In May 2024, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — a category built almost entirely on fake emails — accounted for over $2.9 billion in adjusted losses in a single year. That figure dwarfed ransomware losses by a factor of nearly 50. And those

Carl B. Johnson Dec 13, 2025 7 min read
PayPal Phishing Attacks

PayPal Phishing Attacks: How to Spot and Stop Them

The Fake Invoice That Drained $1.4 Million In early 2025, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that business email compromise — the category that includes PayPal phishing attacks — generated over $2.9 billion in adjusted losses in 2023 alone. That number hasn't slowed down. One

Carl B. Johnson Dec 13, 2025 7 min read
Spoofing Caller

Spoofing Caller Attacks: How Criminals Fake Trust

In March 2025, the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans lost over $12.5 billion to cybercrime in 2023 alone — and phone-based fraud, driven largely by spoofing caller techniques, remains one of the fastest-growing categories. I've watched organizations with solid email security get gutted

Carl B. Johnson Dec 09, 2025 7 min read
Phishing Links

What Is a Phishing Link? How to Spot and Stop Them

In March 2024, a finance employee at a multinational firm in Hong Kong wired $25.6 million to threat actors after joining a video call that appeared to feature the company's CFO. The deepfake was convincing, but the attack started with something far simpler — a phishing link embedded

Carl B. Johnson Dec 09, 2025 7 min read
Group Online Svindel

Group Online Svindel: How Organized Fraud Rings Work

In January 2024, a finance employee at the multinational firm Arup wired $25 million to criminals after a deepfake video call featuring what appeared to be the company's CFO and several colleagues. Every person on that call was fake — AI-generated avatars operated by an organized fraud ring. That

Carl B. Johnson Dec 09, 2025 7 min read
PayPal DocuSign Phishing

PayPal DocuSign Phishing: How This Scam Bypasses Filters

A Legitimate DocuSign Email That Steals Your PayPal Credentials In November 2024, Avanan researchers documented a wave of attacks where threat actors sent phishing emails through DocuSign's actual platform — not spoofed emails, but real DocuSign notifications. The documents inside impersonated PayPal invoices requesting payment authorization for hundreds or

Carl B. Johnson Dec 05, 2025 7 min read
Is It Legit

Removed App: Is It Legit or a Security Risk?

When "Removed" Shows Up and You Start Googling You found an app, a service, or a browser extension labeled "Removed" — or maybe something you installed just vanished and now shows as "removed" in your app list. So you searched "removed is it legit.

Carl B. Johnson Nov 28, 2025 6 min read
Cyber Security

Cyber Security in 2025: What Actually Works Now

The Breach That Changed How I Think About Cyber Security In February 2024, Change Healthcare — one of the largest health payment processors in the United States — was hit by a ransomware attack that disrupted pharmacies, hospitals, and insurance claims across the country for weeks. UnitedHealth Group, its parent company, later

Carl B. Johnson Nov 06, 2025 7 min read