Phishing Test: Can You Detect When You're Being Deceived?

Everyone thinks they have a kind of immunity to phishing until it's too late. Some organized campaigns have a chilling level of detail, and even the most prepared users end up clicking the wrong link. The folks at Jigsaw, now under Google's wing, published an online test so that anyone interested can check how good they are at detecting a phishing attempt…

Officially known as "identity spoofing attack", the main goal of phishing is to obtain sensitive information of all kinds (starting with usernames, passwords, and card data), with an attacker posing as a trusted institution or service. In essence, a striking combination of "social engineering" and "Trojan horse" much more effective than we imagine, and it's causing millions of dollars a year in losses and damage.

The main phishing campaigns focus on high-profile companies, "big fish" with million-dollar budgets that transfer large sums without too many hiccups. However, that doesn't mean individual users are safe. The theft of a credit card, a home banking credential, or a PayPal account is one click away, and the distribution channel par excellence is email. In an attempt to prevent and educate users, Google's Jigsaw (previously Google Ideas) published an excellent phishing test:

Phishing Test: How Good Are You at Separating Fake from Real?

The first step is to invent any name and email address to make the test a bit more plausible. Each of the exercises presents different conditions that the user must analyze closely before choosing an answer. Basically, the process boils down to hovering over the links to check if there's something wrong with them. Fake names, hyphen tricks, URL obfuscators, and extractions based on legitimate alerts are some of the resources this test uses.

The last two or three exercises are a bit more complicated than usual, but there's no time limit here. More than once, the user knows exactly how to avoid falling into a phishing campaign, however, a hasty click ruins everything. Personally, I think the existence of this test is very positive. If we're going to make a mistake, it's preferable to do it here and not in a real scenario, but if the score isn't perfect, we recommend being a bit more careful...

Official site: Click here