Three-Quarters of Black Friday Spam Emails Identified as Scams
Bitdefender found that 77% of Black Friday-themed spam emails in 2024 have been identified as scams, with attackers becoming more creative in their campaigns
Scams use deception to steal money, credentials, or sensitive data, making them a cybersecurity risk for individuals and organizations.
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Background for this topic.
Scams are deceptive schemes intended to make people surrender money, credentials, sensitive information, or access. In information security, they commonly use phishing messages, impersonation, fraudulent websites, business-email compromise, fake technical support, or malicious attachments. Their defining feature is manipulation: the attacker creates a credible pretext and pressures the target to act before verifying the request.
Security teams should treat scams as an attack surface spanning email, messaging, telephone calls, social media, and payment workflows. Material risks include account takeover through stolen credentials, unauthorized payments, disclosure of personal or company data, and malware execution from deceptive content. Useful controls include phishing-resistant authentication, secure payment-change procedures with independent verification, filtering and domain protections, user training focused on reporting, and rapid review of suspicious messages or transactions. Incident handling may require revoking sessions, resetting credentials, contacting financial institutions, preserving evidence, and notifying affected parties where applicable.
Bitdefender found that 77% of Black Friday-themed spam emails in 2024 have been identified as scams, with attackers becoming more creative in their campaigns
Switzerland’s National Cyber Security Centre has warned of a new QR code scam in fake MeteoSwiss letters spreading Android malware
A phishing email claims to be from the New York Times with a story about an assassination attempt against President-elect Donald Trump
The US Federal Trade Commission is celebrating a halving of unwanted telemarketing and scam calls since 2021