PayPal is the favorite company for hackers to perform actions phishing

As Check Point recently reported, the payment platform Paypal is preferred by cyber criminals to perpetrate phishing attacks and phishing channel.

The Phishing attacks are one of the trends of malware more dangerous and handiest today by cybercriminals. According to cybersecurity expert Check Point Company, hackers use social engineering techniques making use of mass email campaigns to deceive Internet users and gain their credentials.

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The data collected by the supplier Israeli security show that the famous payment platform PayPal is one of the favorite places for hackers to launch attacks because of the large amount of personal information that treasures among which account numbers are and banking electronically keys and the large number of users who use it for their online transactions.

“The emails providers, banks and payment platforms are often the most attacked by the economic return they can get cybercriminals. For email providers such as Yahoo or Gmail, it is very interesting. Hackers attack them because users tend to reuse the keys, so if you can penetrate your mail is very likely that also can access your bank or PayPal account”, pointing from the company. A clear example is the recent massive data theft to 500 million Yahoo accounts.

The profitability of phishing for hackers

According to the list released OpenPhis, Paypal is within the top 10 brands used to carry out their attacks, with Apple, Google, Dropbox, Bank of America, Wells Fargo and Santander. This type of malware is very profitable for hackers because of it’s make it easy diffusion and rapid economic revenue that achieve cybercriminals.

“Hackers can get to send millions of infected emails, sometimes even through bots, and that 0.2% of users click is already profitable for them”, says the technical manager of Check Point. The amount of thefts usually ranges between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars.

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Tips to avoid being phished

Check Point provides the following recommendations to detect when a fake email tries to impersonate PayPal in order to steal your credentials. Please note if you see any of the following:

1. Sender domain: The official emails from PayPal as the sender have an email address ending in @ paypal.com. Hackers can get as username PayPal, but their messages are from a different domain.
2. Misspellings: If the user there are typos, misspellings or grammatical and mistranslations is likely halles you to a fraudulent email.
3. Fake Hyperlinks: Links to respond to phishing attacks can be detected because they do not have the https protocol and include the address www.paypal.com.
4. Impersonal greetings: PayPal address you always using your name. A fraudulent email using formulas such as “Dear User” or “Dear Customer”.
5. False sense of urgency: A common feature of these attacks is threatening the loss of your account if you do not update your personal data. As companies never request private information by email, it is a tactic of phishing.
6. Attachments: PayPal will never send attachments in your emails. Check Point advises never open a document emailed to unless you are safely on their origin.