Last month Netflix released a new crime drama, aimed as the rapidly growing Indian digital streaming market, called Jamtara. Not only has the TV series underlined the US company’s ability not just to stream but to produce content itself but it has also highlighted one of the world’s biggest growing digital threats – phishing.
Jamtara is focused on a gang of online scammers who look at ways to increase their wealth through phishing scams. Centred in the city of the same name in the Indian state of Jharkhand, the programme is designed to highlight how victims are easily duped and should be seen as a way to prevent one of the most prevalent forms of online crime today.
The release of the series coincides with a report, published by Check Point Technologies that looks at the phishing in the last quarter of 2019. The bad news is that the scammers are becoming more sophisticated in their attempt to lure unsuspecting victims. In the last quarter of 2019, 25% of all reported attacks were aimed at mobile users, with Chase Mobile Banking, Facebook, Apple and PayPal being the most targeted brands. In fact Facebook saw the most overall attempts, with 18% of all attacks related to the Social Media Network.
Times have certainly changed and it used to be the financial sector that was targeted the most. Whilst there are still large volumes of infringements against financial institutions, it is more social brands that suffer the most such as Netflix, Spotify, Apple and Microsoft. The highest “ranked” brand when based on phishing attempts in the financial sector is PayPal who were targeted in 5% of the overall cases.
Phishing is a major concern to global brands. It diverts revenue and customer traffic and can have a major impact on reputation. Often phishing attacks happen without the brand having any knowledge of the issue and if they are aware it is often too late to stop at least some damage being done.
The two areas that brands can focus their attentions on are Social Media and Domain name registrations. A Social Media Monitoring solution will look for potential infringing accounts being set up using an organization’s brand names or trademarks as well as where users are discussing the organization in a negative sentimental way. Being able to act quickly in removing Social Media accounts that are either diverting real traffic/interactions or inserting themselves into genuine interactions is key to avoiding reputational damage.
A Domain Name Monitoring solution allows a brand holder to see where registrations have been made using brand names or trademarks. Phishing attacks normally start with registrations that either feature a brand name or use homographs, words using mixed script or numerics to appear as if they are written in Latin script, which on first glance appear genuine but could be diverting legitimate traffic to illegitimate sources.
BrandShelter’s expertise comes from protecting our customer’s online revenues and reputation. We use our in-house expertise and technology to find threats to our customers intellectual property and quickly remove the infringing content. Whilst the threat of phishing has become of Box Office interest thanks to Netflix’s hew series Jamtara, our brand protection solutions mean that our customers will not be the next headline act.
