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Crédit Agricole, Facebook, and Microsoft are the most impersonated brands in URL phishing attacks
August 2021 by Atlas VPN
Criminals continue to impersonate well-known brands to trick people into giving up their personal information.
According to the data presented by the Atlas VPN team, Crédit Agricole, a French financial group, was by far the most imitated brand in H1 2021 worldwide. The brand was linked with 17,755 unique phishing URLs, followed by social media giant Facebook with 17,338 and Microsoft with 12,777.
Multi-platform messaging service provider WhatsApp is the second social media brand to make the top ten list. It was taken advantage of in 8,727 phishing attacks. Meanwhile, French bank La Banque Postale occupies the fifth spot with 7,180 attacks.
Other brands in the top ten list include Orange (4,047), Amazon (3,501), Comcast (3,116), PayPal (2,601), and Chase bank (2,537).
Financial brands were criminals’ favorite
Phishing efforts involving financial industry brands were the most frequent. They accounted for 36% of URL phishing attacks in H1 2021.
Ruth Cizynski, the cybersecurity researcher and writer at Atlas VPN, shares her thoughts on the phishing attack trends:
“Imitating well-known and trusted brands in attempts to steal people’s personal information is a common tactic among cybercriminals. Due to the rise in digital payments and growing reliance on online banking during the pandemic, financial service brands were particularly popular in phishing attacks.”
Social Media companies were also heavily impacted. Social media brand impersonation accounted for over a quarter (26%) of all brand phishing attacks in the first half of this year.
Other affected sectors include cloud (17%), e-commerce and logistics (11%), internet and telecommunications (9%), and government (1%).
