Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Phishing Campaigns Targeting USPS See as Much Web Traffic as the USPS Itself

akamai.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–75 of 75 posts

Re: Phishing Campaigns Targeting USPS See as Much Web Traffic as the USPS Itself

#71

Post by Cthulhu_ »

jonas21 wrote: post #52
mr_mitm wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just the elderly generation though. Young people mostly use apps and might barely interact with an actual browser. Big browsers de-emphasize the URL bar more and more. Yes, you and I and probably everyone on HN will never have a problem with this, but significant portions of the population will. I think it's a hard problem.

Isn't the simple solution to this to encourage everyone to use the USPS app (and apps for banking, etc.)? Most young people probably do this already.

That isn't actually simple though.

Re: Phishing Campaigns Targeting USPS See as Much Web Traffic as the USPS Itself

#72

Post by riehwvfbk »

jddj wrote: post #54
jonas21 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the simple solution to this to encourage everyone to use the USPS app (and apps for banking, etc.)? Most young people probably do this already.

This just moves the mimicry to the app stores. Admittedly there's some curation but it's far from perfect

Just to be clear, the two options in this false equivalence are "no fake USPS app has ever been seen, though it is possible in theory" vs "scam websites see as much traffic as USPS itself".

Re: Phishing Campaigns Targeting USPS See as Much Web Traffic as the USPS Itself

#73

Post by renk »

habosa wrote: post #44

It might not change anything, but I think the criminal penalties for scams need to be significantly raised. The idea of reaching out to someone you don't know at all and attempting to steal their money by lying and betraying their confidence is morally disgusting. The type of people who can do this hundreds or thousands of times a day are criminals of the worst and least redeemable kind, yet if caught they would like…

Indeed. Moral depravedness is supposedly modeled by law. There is an uncanny overlap of scammers and normal economic activity though. That needs to change.

Re: Phishing Campaigns Targeting USPS See as Much Web Traffic as the USPS Itself

#74

Post by ndriscoll »

mr_mitm wrote: post #39
Larrikin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Internet has been around long enough at this point. Maybe your parents might never be able to read a URL and there will always be people who get scammed. But we should be taking the obvious steps like enforcing government domains on .gov . Attacks and scams are getting more sophisticated, so I hope when I'm elderly I can atleast check the .gov portion and know it's an actual government website.

It's not just the elderly generation though. Young people mostly use apps and might barely interact with an actual browser. Big browsers de-emphasize the URL bar more and more. Yes, you and I and probably everyone on HN will never have a problem with this, but significant portions of the population will. I think it's a hard problem.

For .gov, gov.uk, etc. specifically, it's not that hard of a problem. You can't sign up for those TLDs if you're not a government, so browsers could decorate the URL bar for them. Then you just need to teach people e.g. that the URL bar should turn green whenever interacting with any government, and governments at all levels should use these restricted domains.

You could do a similar thing with banks. Require them to use a .bank TLD (or .bank.us, .bank.uk, etc.), only let actual, regulated banks register them, and give them special decorations. Use eminent domain if those domains are already taken.

Unlike EV cert validation, it would actually mean something if you restricted decorations to specific known regulated groups.

Re: Phishing Campaigns Targeting USPS See as Much Web Traffic as the USPS Itself

#75

Post by jddj »

riehwvfbk wrote: post #72
jddj wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This just moves the mimicry to the app stores. Admittedly there's some curation but it's far from perfect

Just to be clear, the two options in this false equivalence are "no fake USPS app has ever been seen, though it is possible in theory" vs "scam websites see as much traffic as USPS itself".

The first result in my region when I type usps into the google play store is a sponsored result for an app called Parcel Tracker, by internet media. The visible reviews for this app are negative citing scamminess.

If I search for whatsapp, in the sponsored section there are 10+ apps with white speech-bubble style icons on green backgrounds that aren't WhatsApp

Post reply on HN