How scammers get your private email address and what you can do

Phishing scams are frequent cyberattacks that pose a threat to businesses. Cybercriminals employ this tactic to trick victims into disclosing private information such as passwords, bank account details, and credit card numbers. Therefore, the question of what to do if a scammer gets your email address automatically arises. 

The majority of the time, phishers contact their victim through email while pretending to be a reputable business. For instance, your service provider might mail you a reminder to renew your subscription and include your credit card information. 

If you do, your bank information will be compromised, costing you money. In some cases, access to your account is significantly worse. How can spammers acquire my email address, though, or why do I keep receiving SMS from arbitrary email addresses? You’ll have these thoughts in your head. 

Continue reading to discover how and where electronic addresses are gathered. At the end of this essay, we’ll also walk you through the preventative strategies and introduce you to ezchargeback. 

Ezchargeback is an asset recovery company that will help you recover your funds in case you lose your money to a phishing scam. 

Where do scammers Find Email Addresses? 

Phishing fraudsters use different techniques to gather the email addresses of their victims. Here are a few well-known methods.

Dark Web or Data Providers

The portion of the WWW that search engines like Google don’t index is known as the Dark Web. They are only reachable using specific browsers. The content isn’t freely accessible by commercial browsers, and accessing it requires more sophisticated computing skills. As a result, it serves as a den for online criminal activity, such as purchasing and selling email addresses and other sensitive information. 

On the dark web, hackers may purchase anything they want, including credit card data, login information for subscription services, email addresses, usernames, passwords, and Netflix account breaches. 

Once they possess the information, they can use it to gain access to accounts using brute-force or social engineering attacks, credential stuffing, and other means.

Openly Available Email Addresses on Social Media

Scammers frequently use social media as a resource to locate email addresses because it is a public space. More than 90% of people in today’s world disclose information about their personal and professional lives online. 

On the majority of social networking platforms, people happily fill out all the information and then ignore it. This makes collecting email addresses for scams quite simple. Users of social media should remember that everything they post on their profile is visible, even if they have privacy settings adjusted to their liking. 

Surprisingly, hackers have more information than just your email address. They can also obtain additional delicate personal information. They can employ it to carry out phishing attacks, including email spoofing, whaling, and business email compromise.

Email Harvesting

Another method scammers use to gather their victim’s email addresses is email harvesting. Cybercriminals create bots to search the internet for email addresses. The bots recognize any email format on websites using the “@” symbol and add it to a list. Email harvesters can quickly collect thousands of email addresses as a consequence. 

Fake Websites

To gather user information, many phishing criminals create websites that look legitimate. Typically, the email requests that you join their mailing list or website newsletter. While you might believe you are joining up at a trustworthy website, cybercriminals are quietly waiting to spam your email.

Social Engineering Posts and Online Multiplayer Games

Through interpersonal interactions, social engineering entails persuading victims to reveal private or confidential information. It preys on human emotions and snaps judgments like opening a link in an email that has the word “urgency” in the subject line. 

Additionally, seemingly harmless games and tests that access your social media accounts may sell your login information and profile information to outside parties. 

Online multiplayer games can also be attacked by hackers. To make sure breaches receive prompt publicity, you can go toward more well-known ones. However, they may not always be shielded from terrible accidents. For instance, the popular Just Dance video game franchise from Ubisoft recently experienced a security compromise resulting in user data loss.

Preventitive measures 

Email is the primary form of communication that we all use when communicating with clients and business partners. Email security is crucial for corporations because of this. 

If you use the internet, opt-in pages, newsletters, and subscriptions from third parties are nothing new to you. Marketers will ask for personal information on their websites, such as your name and email address if you want to receive relevant information. 

You run the danger whether you use a business email address to sign up for a fitness class or a personal one to download that fascinating professional report from your preferred website. 

What may con artists do with your address, then? Spamming your inbox is only the beginning. They can use it for man-in-the-middle attacks, contact harvesting, account takeovers, data theft, and sensitive information theft.

Conclusion

Scams involving phishing are nothing new and aren’t going anywhere. The safety of your data is, however, always in your control. It would be best if you dealt with phishing prevention, whether you’re an individual attempting to safeguard your email from attacks or the CEO of a corporation seeking to safeguard the infrastructure and assets of the company

. 

, and, most importantly, contact ezchargeback for assistance in recovering your stolen assets.