One defense mechanism may be relatively easy for an attacker to circumvent. Instead, a security system must have layers, making it unlikely that an attacker has the tools and skills to break through a

These days we can see that social networking techniques are used in social network phishing and this has become more common. Here phishers gain total control over the email or social networking account of the user by using various techniques. Most commonly this is done by sending a genuine looking email or message from the website. This requests user to confirm their username and password for individuals social networking accounts. This is done by an attached URL in the mail or message. After getting control over users account, in first stage phisher changes the password of the user. This information is used by the phishers to send fake messages that look like they are form the registered user to request money or gain access to accounts of other users. Mobile platform is also used by the phisher to target the users. When using the Internet or downloading mobile apps, mobile users may be targeted by phishing attacks similar to those from personal computers (PC). Phishing attempts on mobile devices are harder to identify by users, because it is difficult to discern whether a page is legitimate or not when looking at devices with small screens where the complete URL is not visible (Aleroud et al., 2017).

The most important is to bring awareness among everyone about these attacks. Lack of awareness is the main reason that provides opportunity to phishers to deceive others. Training and educating users about how to detect phishing attacks while they are doing regular activities on their email system. It will also protect users from becoming victim of phishing. Lightweight Smartphone anti-phishing technique based on URL behavior helps in avoiding attacks. Phishing URLs can be analyzed based on the lexical features and host-based features. Knowing that phishers use visual components ripped off from a legitimate web page in their website to deceive unsuspecting users. Due to this anti-phishing helps in securing the mobile phones (Orunsolu et al., 2017).

Reference

Aleroud, A., & Zhou, L. (2017). Phishing environments, techniques, and countermeasures: A survey. Computers & Security, 68, 160–196. doi: 10.1016/j.cose.2017.04.006

Orunsolu, A. A., Alaran, M. A., Adebayo, A. A., Kareem, S. O., & Oke, A. (2017). A Lightweight Anti-Phishing Technique for Mobile Phone. Acta Informatica Pragensia, 6(2), 114–123. doi: 10.18267/j.aip.104