Are You or Your Loved Ones A Mule?
Do you know about Phishing?
No this isn’t sitting on the bank of a river, stream, pond or in/on the sea dangling your rod over the water…if you are still confused then see this article here and all should become clear.
I hear you ask “What have Mules got to do with Phishing?”
The answer is this:
We are not talking about four legged creatures that are half horse and half donkey….think more of drug couriers who are more usually referred to as Mules!
Now, in most cases Mules are those that either carry things for others [hence the use of the term] or act as laundering points, such as in organized crime syndicates, they do the dirty work of moving material from A to B and usually have little or no idea hat what they are doing is illegal. They may even be acting as a Mule under duress, such as blackmail, etc.
So, back to the Phishing…..
There have been a number of people who have recently been recruited as Mules by the Phishers to help process the identities stolen during the latest Phishing Trawl, but the Mule doesn’t know that they are helping criminals… They believe that they have a ‘real’ job helping financial companies with ‘excess’ workload or helping to test the companies security by loging in using the stolen credentials and moving money to other accounts…scary huh?
Of course, when the authorities catch up with the Mules and they are arrested and charged, they are often shocked that they had been so naive and feel rather ‘used’.
So next time you see a job ad on the web, in the local paper or receive a job offer via e-mail, stop and think is this really legit, or am I about to be turned into a mule…
Oh, and this [Phishing and using Mules to process the stolen identities] isn’t something new, this has been happening for at least the last six months or more, but it is becoming more prevalent as Phishing attacks have exploded over the last year growing almost 5,000 percent since November 2003, but that’s another “tail”…
Don’t think it “really” happens? Think again, here are some links to prove it:
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