Ever since the worldwide pandemic has begun, many physical stores have been forced to shut down, including in the UK. Thus, it as well forced a lot of UK customers to rely on online shopping. Even that few retail stores around the country have slowly reopened, customers have learned the advantages and practicality of shopping their needs online. However, cybercriminals take advantage of this popular online shopping craze. Many have executed phishing attacks by masquerading as parcel delivery companies to steal sensitive data from the customers, such as their financial information. The most recent target of this kind of phishing attack includes the Post Office in the UK.
This phishing attack’s common technique is sending out SMS informing their targets about a missed parcel delivery. Oblivious victims will be instructed to enter their financial credentials to pay a surcharge to rebook the failed delivery from the said missed parcels. Little do the victims know, it is a trick that hackers do to obtain their sensitive financial data and use it to steal more significant amounts from them.
Aside from faking delivery companies, hackers have also impersonated UK banks and steal more specific bank credentials to acquire access to victims’ bank accounts.
Phishing attacks and scams success rate increases
The efficiency of these phishing attacks has been reported to be effective because conducting online purchases does not usually indicate which delivery company will accommodate the order. Therefore, if a customer gets a text message from any faked delivery company saying that their order had failed delivery attempts, they can easily disregard the chance of the text being a scam and proceed to following instructions so that their demands will successfully be delivered.
The process will lead the unsuspecting customers to enter their sensitive bank details and pay the mentioned extra fees of the scammers, and they can eventually risk being stolen into.
As time pass, cybercriminals try to jump into impersonating different targets to improve their tactics. They find other brands and companies that will seem to be an easy target. An example of this is how they initially targeted the company Royal Mail and then followed by Hermes. The most recent reported victim is the Post Office since they appear to be an easier victim than the former ones.
