What Is Social Engineering?
In social engineering attacks, scammers impersonate trusted officials, like customer service representatives at a bank, to con unsuspecting victims out of millions of dollars every year. The “engineering” part doesn’t have to be technical in these types of attacks, which is part of what makes them such a pervasive threat. By pretending to be someone else, scammers aim to trick a person into giving them information that they shouldn’t. A social engineer doesn’t need to crack your password. Instead, they try to get you to give it to them over the phone by claiming there’s something wrong with your account, and that they’re here to help.