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Phishing and Scam Examples

Real world samples of what to look out for

Phishing and other cyber scams can lead to significant financial losses, data breaches, and other security issues. It is essential for both individuals and organizations to remain vigilant and informed about the latest tactics the bad guys are using. Below are various examples of phishing emails and scams the Wireguided team has encountered and how to identify and resolve common problems.

Please view our companion articles: Detecting Phishing Emails and Have I Been Hacked?

Phishing Emails

Below are examples of phishing emails that try to trick you into giving up your login credentials or calling them so they can steal your money. Please read our Detecting Phishing Emails article for methods of identifying these threats.

Microsoft 365

Faxes / Voicemails / Invoices / Etc.

Full Screen Microsoft Alert Scams

Unlike phishing emails these alerts take over your entire screen and prevent you from closing them. They are just faked Microsoft alert web pages but for the user, it looks very frightening. The usual vector for these attacks are misstyped website addresses which send you to a booby-trapped web site, malicious web extensions the user downloaded, or links in emails or other web sites. The good news is that there is no actual hack in 99% of these cases

How to Fix

If the keyboard is not locked try pressing ALT+CTRL+Del and then select Sign out. Sign back in. If your keyboard is locked a reboot will clear it out. Make sure you do not click on 'Restore tabs' in your web browser when reopening.

Fake Windows Notifications

These scams trick the user by using web browser and Windows notifications to show fake alerts and warnings. The goal is to trick the person into calling or clicking on a button to kick off a tech support scam and install malware. These notifications are enabled when the user is tricked into clicking 'Allow' when prompted for a web site to show notifications. Once that is done the site will then start sending scam pop-ups on the person's desktop.

How to Fix

If these are generated by Chrome go to chrome://settings/content/notifications to remove notification permissins from web sites or chrome://extensions to remove malicious extensions. For directions for Microsoft Edge click here.