Phishing attempts have arrived at new levels of privacy invasiveness. Now, hackers and cybercriminals have found a legal way to track whether you’ve opened an email they have sent to you. The information that they can collect when you have just opened an email is staggering. Here’s a little more about this new trend in cyberattacks.
We’ve all heard of “phishing” and have become accustomed to the need to keep an eye out for it. Unfortunately, cybercriminals have formulated a more advanced method of gathering information about you and your employees without the need for the victim to click on any links in the email. Commonly, phishing attempts arrive in the form of an email that generally looks innocuous and familiar. These criminals usually create email addresses that look familiar, like from your banking institutions or even from vendors you might be using.
When someone opens the email, there is usually a link or an attachment that the victim is encouraged to click on. This is where the criminal can usually start collecting information. If the link goes to a spoofed landing page for you to put in your banking login information or if you download an attachment with malware in it, doing that can put your company at risk.
By now, you’ve trained your employees on how to spot these types of emails and what to do if they come through, so you think your company is safe…well this new technique is changing the cybercrime game. Criminals have found a way to turn one pixel, which is 0.0104 of an inch in length, into computer code that can track a staggering amount of personal information without even clicking on anything in the email, such as:
- How many times you open that specific email.
- The type of operating system you use.
- The IP address that you’re on when you open the email.
- The time of day that you opened the email.
- The make and model of the device that you used to open the email.
This tactic is not limited to criminals though, because, technically, it’s legal. Many advertisers and marketers use this data-gathering technique in order to gather information on their prospects. Vendors of your company can hire marketers that use this tactic to track information about your company. The best thing that one can do is to not open emails from senders that you don’t know.
LibertyID is the leader in identity theft restoration, having restored the identities of tens of thousands of individuals without fail. If you retain personal information on your customers, now it is the time to get data breach planning and a response program in place with our LibertyID for Small Business data breach preparation program. With LibertyID Enterprise you can now add value to existing products, services, or relationships by covering your customers, employees, or members with LibertyID’s fully managed identity theft restoration service—at a fraction of our retail price—with no enrollment and no file sharing. We have no direct communication with your group members–until they need us.
Call us now for a no-obligation proposal at 844-411-LIBERTY (844-411-5423).