5 Reasons Why Data Theft Is On The Rise

Data thefts are on the rise and spammers couldn’t be happier. They’ll probably continue to rise and here are five reasons why:

1. They make a spammer’s job easier: Spammers get the email addresses they use to send their spam to through a variety of means – they harvest them from websites, steal them via phishing attacks, buy lists from other spammers and more. Data breaches usually result in large lists of email addresses quickly and without having to spend time harvesting them.

2. They make phishing attacks more successful: The email addresses and other information stolen from data breaches enables spammers who launch phishing attacks to fine tune them into spear phishing. These targeted attacks tend to be more successful since they can be made more convincing thanks to the personal info the spammer stole.

3. They generate large profits: The underground cybercrime economy thrives on the buying and selling of info. Spammers buy email addresses to spam and email addresses and passwords to hijack accounts to send spam with, and phishers buy them too for their own attacks.

4. Companies still aren’t taking security seriously: It seems more and more these days that companies don’t take security seriously until the worst happens. Many companies, especially small businesses, make excuses for why they don’t have or update security software; It’s too expensive, it’s too much of a hassle, my employees know better than to click on links in spam, etc. They usually find out the hard way how wrong they are.

5. There are still gullible people out there: No matter how much education is offered and warnings given, there will always be people who don’t think twice about clicking on links in spam and phishing messages or who will click “ok” when prompted to install a “codec” or “software update” to watch a video they saw a link to on a social media site. As long as that remains true, hackers and spammers alike will have a field day.