Shoutout to the IT guy at my kid's school who said most phishing emails now come from hijacked real accounts, not fake addresses

I found out from him that checking just the sender name isn't enough anymore, because my neighbor's email got taken over and started sending malware links to everyone in their contacts last Tuesday.

4 comments

4 Comments

rose_perry121mo ago

Scary how common this is now. My aunt's Facebook got hacked and sent those fake cash app links. You really have to look at the actual email address, not just the display name. Even then it's getting tricky.

abby_murphy1mo ago

Used to just glance at the display name and call it good. Then my cousin got a text from "Amazon" about a weird order, but the number was a regular cell phone. They almost gave up their login... now I check everything twice. Even texts from my own area code make me pause.

robin8969d ago

That approach works, but I've started looking at it a little differently. The scammers are getting so good that the email address alone isn't always the tell anymore. Saw one last month that was from "amazon-update@amzn.co" which looked pretty legit at a quick glance. What really helped me was just slowing down and not clicking anything for at least five minutes. If it's truly urgent, a real company will call or send another message. That pause alone has saved me from at least two convincing-looking login pages.

hayes.wade1mo ago

Ugh, my buddy's dad got one of those fake "your account is locked" emails last week, @rose_perry12. It looked so real he almost clicked it before noticing the sender was "support@secure-paypal-help.com" or some nonsense. These scammers are getting way too good at copying the real thing.