Google and Amazon are now the foremost imitated brands for phishing

Apple falls to seventh place while Google and Amazon take the highest spots

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Earlier this year, Check Point revealed that Apple was the foremost imitated brand for phishing in Q1 but over the course of a previous couple of months, it's fallen to seventh place with Google and Amazon now taking the highest spots.

Phishing is estimated to be the start line of over 90 percent of all cyberattacks and consistent with Verizon's 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report, nearly one third (32%) of all data breaches involved phishing activity. Additionally, phishing was present in 78 percent of cyberespionage incidents and therefore the installation and use of backdoors in company networks.

While phishing attacks attempt to steal users' credentials and other sensitive data, brand phishing involves an attacker imitating a politician's website of a known brand through the utilization of an identical domain or URL. Links to those deceptive websites that replicate the design and style of a brand's official site are sent via email or SMS and that they often contain a form wont to steal credentials, personal information or payments.

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Top phishing brands

According to Check Point Research's new Brand Phishing Report for Q2 2020, Google and Amazon were the foremost imitated brands in phishing attempts and therefore the total number of brand name phishing detections was like Q1 of this year.

Email phishing exploits were the second commonest type after web-based exploits compared to Q1 where email was third. The easing of worldwide Covid-19 restrictions might be the rationale for this alteration as businesses around the world have started reopening and employees are returning to figure

When it came to the highest brand industry sectors utilized in phishing attacks in Q2, technology, banking, and social media were the foremost popular among cybercriminals. In attacks that imitated email services, Microsoft, Outlook, and Unicredit were the foremost imitated brands while Google, Amazon, and WhatsApp were the foremost imitated web companies. On mobile, brand phishing attempts tried to impersonate Facebook, WhatsApp, and PayPal.

To avoid falling victim to phishing scams, Check Point recommends that users verify they're ordering products or services from an authentic website, watch out for “special” offers that appear too good to be true, and appearance out for lookalike domains which will contain spelling errors.

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