I Came VERY Close To Clicking A Fake Web Link.

You should read the article below. It highlights the sophisticated methods scammers employ.

Russian Hackers Create 4,300 Fake Travel Sites to Steal Hotel Guests' Payment Data 

"The activity......., is designed to target customers of the hospitality industry, specifically hotel guests who may have travel reservations with spam emails.

Of the 4,344 domains tied to the attack, 685 domains contain the name "Booking", followed by 18 with "Expedia," 13 with "Agoda," and 12 with "Airbnb," indicating an attempt to target all popular booking and rental platforms.

The above article reminded me of how I almost fell for a phishing scam. The email I received appeared to come from Zoho.com, a company I use to host my 3 Email accounts, personal website, and a number of other functions.

The phishing Email was so specific, similar in scope to the ones mentioned above, that it did not cross my mind it could be a scam. The Email claimed to announce a new version of Zoho Mail's "Mail Merge" function. Now, THAT is a specific subject for a scam Email!

I came within a click of my mouse to find out more about this upgrade. But, something did not feel right. Zoho doesn't send emails about updates to "little" functions like mail merge. They just do the update. So I hovered my mouse over the link to see the URL. The domain name ended in ".de." Zoho uses ".com." Why would a German (.de a top-level domain) subsidiary of Zoho be sending me this email?

I forwarded the email to Zoho Mail's support desk asking about it. Sure enough, it was a scam.