The Simple but Destructive Act of Phishing and Catfishing
This week’s class really opened my eyes to the horrible deceptive acts that phishing and catfishing can bring. I always pictured phishing as some super technical complex coding content, but our discussion kind of shattered that. My group and I walked through how easy it would be to pull off a fake “RSVP to the work luncheon” email, send it company-wide, make the link look official, and then click. The part that bothered me most is how normal it all feels. We’re trained to be responsive at work and helpful to our teams, so an RSVP link doesn’t set off alarms. Realizing that something so simple could open the door to someone accessing a computer and everything on it was honestly unsettling. The videos we watched in class added a sorrowful feeling to the environment. Watching people lose their savings, privacy, or even their sense of safety because they trusted the wrong message; it was heartbreaking. None of them looked “reckless.” They were tired, busy, trying to do the right thing, or ...