Phishing scam is an element of many types of fraud but in this article we are going to look at the kind of phishing scams that are most commonly seen.

Dangling the bate

Every phishing scam will aim to get you to part with your information and as people become more savvy and the chances of pulling off such a scam diminish, the way of sending out the numbers of ‘hits’ needed to yield any kind of result, will likely be by email. The type of scam might be something that looks like it comes from your bank or Paypal saying that you need to give your details or your account will be suspended. If you do log in through one of he links on these websites you will land up on a cloned website of the trusted site you thought you were logging into and your details will used to scam you or malware will be downloaded.

The Spear phishing scam

This is a very targeted type of phishing scam where typically the perpetrator will already have some of your sensitive details before they target you. They could have got the information from social media about recent purchases you have made or even where you live. From that starting point you may receive an email that will ask for other information including passwords.

The Whaling scam

This type of scam is most often directed towards businesses, often targeting high ranking executives in the organisation who have the access the scammers need, to emails that can then be used to target employees within that organisation or to order fraudulent money transfers. We will look at this type of scam in more detail in CEO fraud.

The W-2 Phishing scam

This type of scam is along the line of the ‘whaling scam’ and mainly targets businesses in an attempt to get the details of employees as well as any associated contractors details. Schools and hospitals as well as business of all types have been recent victims of this type of scam where an email will often look as though it has come from the tax office or from an accounting firm. And these emails are potentially catastrophic because as well as trying to extort information they often contain malware.


At ABCIPI we are often called on to help with this kind of fraud. We would always say read the email carefully and often it will be written with spelling mistakes and bad English, which would never be the case if it came from an official organization like a bank or the Inland Revenue. If you think you might be a victim of this kind of scam, we are here to help. Next week we will be looking at Vishing scam.