Phishing and Social Engineering

Phishing is a form of social engineering and a scam in which attackers deceive people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware.

Voice phishing, or vishing, is the use of telephony (often Voice over IP telephony) to conduct phishing attacks.

Catfishing refers to the creation of a fictitious online persona, or fake identity (typically on social networking platforms), with the intent of deception, usually to mislead a victim into an online romantic relationship or to obtain some illegal financial gain through fraud, such as the pig butchering scam, or through sextortion.

Pretexting, known in the UK as blagging, is a type of social engineering attack that involves a situation, or pretext, created by an attacker in order to lure a victim into a vulnerable situation and to trick them into giving private information, specifically information that the victim would typically not give outside the context of the pretext.

A SIM swap attack (also known as port-out scam, SIM splitting, simjacking, and SIM swapping) is a type of account takeover fraud that generally targets a weakness in two-factor authentication and two-step verification in which the second factor or step is a text message (SMS) or call placed to a mobile telephone.

Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud , or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures, or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 20 years, or both.