An Abney Associates Fraud Awareness Program: Mock email scam ensnares hundreds of bureaucrats

An Abney Associates Fraud Awareness Program: Mock email scam ensnares hundreds of bureaucrats at Justice Canada OTTAWA – Many of the Justice Department’s finest legal minds are falling prey to a garden-variety Internet scam. An internal survey shows almost... More

An Abney Associates Fraud Awareness Program: Mock email scam ensnares hundreds of bureaucrats at Justice Canada OTTAWA – Many of the Justice Department’s finest legal minds are falling prey to a garden-variety Internet scam. An internal survey shows almost 2,000 staff were conned into clicking on a phoney “phishing” link in their email, raising questions about the security of sensitive information. The department launched the mock scam in December as a security exercise, sending emails to 5,000 employees to test their ability to recognize cyber fraud. The emails looked like genuine communications from government or financial institutions, and contained a link to a fake website that was also made to look like the real thing. Across the globe, an estimated 156 million of these so-called “phishing” emails are sent daily, and anyone duped into clicking on the embedded web link risks transferring confidential information – such as online banking passwords – to criminals. The Justice Departm Less