What is Spoofing and How to Avoid it

 What is spoofing and how to avoid it

Spoofing is a way of calling or sending a text message with someone else's phone number or sender ID.

Types Of Spoofing

1. Email Spoofing
2. Website or URL Spoofing
3. Caller ID Spoofing
4. Text Message Spoofing
5. IP Spoofing
6. Facial Spoofing
7. GPS Spoofing
8. Man-In-The-Middle Spoofing

1.Email Spoofing

It is the creation of email messages with a forged sender address. The core email protocols do not have any mechanism for authentication, making it common for spam and phishing emails to use such spoofing to mislead or even prank the recipient about the origin of the message. Don't believe every email you receive especially those claiming that you have won something and you need to send money for shipping or flight for your winnings to be sent to you cause you will be just sending money straight to scammers.

2.Website Spoofing

It is all about making a malicious website look like a legitimate one. The spoofed site will look like the login page for a website you frequent—down to the branding, user interface, and even a spoofed domain name that looks the same at first glance. Cybercriminals use spoofed websites to capture your username and password. Don't use links you receive to login to your accounts e.g PayPal, skrill, NetFlix and many other common and mostly used websites with login options.

3.Caller ID Spoofing

This happens when scammers fool your caller ID by making the call appear to be coming from somewhere it isn't. Scammers have learned that you're more likely to answer the phone if the caller ID shows an area code the same or near your own. In some cases, scammers will even spoof the first few digits of your phone number in addition to the area code to create the impression that the call is originating from your neighbourhood

4.Text Message Spoofing

Text message spoofing or SMS spoofing is sending a text message with someone else's phone number or sender ID. If you've ever sent a text message from your laptop, you've spoofed your own phone number in order to send the text, because the text did not actually originate from your phone. 

5.GPS Spoofing

GPS spoofing is an attack in which a radio transmitter located near the target is used to interfere with legitimate GPS signals. The attacker can transmit no data at all or could transmit inaccurate coordinates. This result in you tracing the fake location mostly of the scammer or believing that the one calling or texting you is a real agent of the company calling you just by seeing the fake location they want you to see.

6.Man-In-The-Middle-Attack

You have that habit of connecting to the free Wi-Fi at your local coffee shop and do business as usual on it just to save your own data? Have you considered what would happen if a cybercriminal hacked the Wi-Fi or created another fraudulent Wi-Fi network in the same location? In either case, you have a perfect setup for a man-in-the-middle attack, so named because cybercriminals are able to intercept web traffic between two parties. The spoof comes into play when the criminals alter the communication between the parties to reroute funds or solicit sensitive personal information like credit card numbers or logins. The solution to this is to avoid using free Wi-Fi offered at different places cause one day you might be the victim of this MITM Attack.

7.IP Spoofing

IP spoofing is used when someone wants to hide or disguise the location from which they're sending or requesting data online. As it applies to cyber threats, IP address spoofing is used in distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) to prevent malicious traffic from being filtered out and to hide the attacker's location.

8.Face Spoof Attack

A face spoof attack is an attempt to deceive a face-recognition system using a substitute for another's person's face – usually their photo, video recording or a 3D mask. If the spoofing attack succeeds, the fraudster acquires privileges or access rights of another person. You may call it identity theft.

It is wise to stay protected online and to get as much knowledge as you need to help you secure yourself in this online world. To stay on the safe side in this online evolving world, feel free to follow us as our main motive is to make technology safe and simple to understand for everyone.