Phishing is now spilling over to your mobile phone. The next time you receive an SMS from your mobile operator informing you about a service you have subscribed to and asking you to call a certain number to unsubscribe, beware, it can be a phishing message.
Just like computer users who click on spam emails and are taken to a fraudulent website posing as a legitimate one, SMS phishing (or simply ‘SMiShing’) similarly dupes the mobile user to visit a phished site by sending an SMS pretending to be from a trustworthy entity. If one falls in the trap, it can lead to leakage of sensitive information such as user names, passwords and even credit card numbers.
While SMS phishing or SMiShing misleads the user to visit a website, ‘vishing’ on the other hand directs the user to call on a number, for instance the customer care number of a telecom service provider, which instead is routed to a hacker. Voice phishing or ‘vishing’ uses a combination of voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), SMS and the Internet to dupe the receiver into dialing a phone number and collect sensitive subscriber information for financial gain.
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