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Phishing

Phishing is a social-engineering attack that tricks people into revealing credentials, payment data, or other sensitive information by impersonating a trusted brand, person, or service.

Updated 1 min read

How it works

A typical campaign sends an urgent message by email, SMS, social DM, or ad that links to a lookalike page asking the victim to "verify", "log in", or "pay". The page captures whatever is entered and forwards it to the attacker.

Phishing has many variants by channel and target, including spear phishing, smishing, QR phishing, whaling, and reverse-proxy phishing that defeats MFA.

How it relates to brand impersonation

Phishing is brand impersonation operationalized for theft. The page or message almost always wears a real brand to borrow its trust. The infrastructure behind it, including domains, hosts, and kits, is exactly what monitoring and takedowns target.

How nebty helps

nebty detects phishing infrastructure impersonating your brand and takes it down on demand, billed on success, so you only pay once the page is removed. Learn more on our phishing protection page.

How to recognise a phishing attempt

Most phishing shares a handful of tells. There is manufactured urgency: a deadline, a threat of suspension, a payment that must happen now, designed to push you past your judgement. There is a mismatch between the display name and the actual address or link, visible when you hover or expand it. There is a request that does not fit the channel, like a bank asking you to confirm a password by email. And there is a link to a domain that is close to but not exactly the real one. On a phone these are harder to catch because the address bar and link previews are truncated. The reliable habit is to stop on any unexpected, urgent message and reach the organisation through a channel you already trust rather than the one the message hands you.

Spear phishing is a targeted phishing attack tailored to a specific person or small group, using personal or organizational details to make the lure highly convincing.

Phishing & email

Smishing is phishing delivered via SMS or messaging apps: a text that impersonates a brand, such as a bank, courier, or tax office, and links to a fraudulent page.

Phishing & email

QR phishing, or "quishing", hides a malicious link inside a QR code so victims scan their way to a fraudulent page, bypassing many email and URL filters in the process.

Phishing & email

A phishing site takedown is the urgent removal of a web page built to steal credentials, payment details, or personal data by impersonating a trusted brand or login.

Takedown & response

Vishing is voice phishing: a phone call or voicemail that impersonates a trusted organization or person to pressure the target into revealing information or making a payment.

Phishing & email

Credential harvesting is the large-scale collection of usernames and passwords, usually through phishing pages that imitate a real login, for use in fraud or account takeover.

Phishing & email

Account takeover (ATO) is fraud in which an attacker gains control of a legitimate user account, typically using stolen or phished credentials, to steal funds, data, or further access.

Phishing & email

Authorized push payment (APP) fraud is when a victim is tricked into authorizing a payment themselves to an account the fraudster controls, often after impersonation of a bank, supplier, or person.

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Benedikt Scheungraber

Benedikt Scheungraber

Co-Founder & CEO

Questions about brand protection, or want to see nebty in action? I’m happy to walk you through it myself and talk openly about whether we can help with your case.