Spear Phishing: Where Thieves Likely Strike

Commercial identity theft can be defined by any of three things. It can involve the identity thief targeting all the employees in an organization or what is known as spear phishing. It can also mean the thief accessing the company’s credit account. The thief targeting a firm’s clients is the third kind of commercial identity theft.

Spear Phishing – Fish in a Barrel

This type of commercial identity theft hijacks the credit of people within an organization. This could involve the employees and/or executives of a company – as either the victims or the perpetrators.

This type of credit hijack uses a method known as spear phishing, by the use of an e-mail, allegedly spawned by a department within the company. The e-mail will often direct employees to a counterfeit website and ask them to personal information or will ask for an e-mail reply with the same info.

Usually, the thief (which can also be an employee of the company) simply copies the database containing all the account and Social Security information of everyone involved in the company and then these thieves can wreak havoc over the employees’ credit account information.

Commercial Credit – The Company’s Credit Account

Here, the identity thief gains access to the credit account, credit cards, and/or checking accounts of a targeted company.

This is done either by a computer hack that is able to gain access to the company’s computer database but more likely it is the work of someone currently or previously employed by the company whose access is readily available.

There is also the possibility that the identity thief hacks the company’s e-banking transactions, either by hacking thru the computers or by a simpler method like stealing checks or stealing and faking credit cards.

Commercial Identity Theft – Client Hijack

Aside from targeting the company’s credit accounts and spear phishing, an identity thief can also make use of the usual phishing scam or its partner pharming in order to victimize a company’s client base, usually by attacking a company’s computer network to harvest for personal client information.

The goal is to gain the client database of the company and gain access to clients’ credit accounts. In the end, the thief can clean out the client’s accounts before anyone else knows any better.

When an identity thief hacks a company’s database to hack their way into a company’s account, do spear phishing to get employee information, or access the clients’ database, you should learn to protect yourself from these thieves, gain useful information, and take steps to prevent hackers from accessing your account. Take. Simple steps you take can ensure that your identity will be safe from these hackers.