{"id":2593,"date":"2019-06-25T08:45:38","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T07:45:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www0.sun.ac.za\/languagecentre\/?p=2593"},"modified":"2021-01-31T09:30:18","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T09:30:18","slug":"catch-them-out-with-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/catch-them-out-with-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Catch them out with language"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s urgent! It\u2019s from a well-known organisation! Act now!<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s probably fake \u2026<\/p>\n<p>If you\u2019re working for a large company, the odds are that you\u2019ve received e-mails from the IT department, warning you of phishing attacks. The reason for such alerts could be that someone clicked on a link in an e-mail that tried to steal usernames, passwords or banking details, and the culprit highly likely used this person\u2019s account to distribute even more phishing e-mails.<\/p>\n<p>Verizon, a telecommunication company in the USA, found that it took more than half an hour (on average) for an employee to report a suspicious e-mail. Hence, during a mere thirty minutes, at least one person will already have taken the bait, statistically. Once on the hook, you will be reeled in and suffer the consequences.<\/p>\n<p>The good news is that the key to avoiding a phishing attack could lie in language.<\/p>\n<p>During the 12<sup>th<\/sup> International Conference on Semantic Computing in 2018, hosted by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), researchers have illustrated that, by analysing the language used in phishing e-mails, they could identify phishing attempts more accurately than cyber security company Netcraft\u2019s leading anti-phishing program. One of the main clues identified by the researchers was that phishing e-mails almost always sounded urgent, containing statements such as \u201cChange immediately\u201d or \u201cSubmit in the next 24 hours\u201d. Another red flag is the way in which the recipient is addressed \u2013 something generic or impersonal like \u201cDear customer\u201d must activate alarm bells! Something else to ask yourself is: Are there any spelling errors? Often spelling and typographical mistakes are dead giveaways, pointing to questionable sources.<\/p>\n<p>If linguistics is not your forte, hold on to the following:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Verify that the e-mail and website addresses in the e-mail are irreproachable.<\/li>\n<li>Don\u2019t click on any link in any e-mail \u2013 unless you know that the sender and link are trustworthy.<\/li>\n<li>Don\u2019t respond to requests for personal or sensitive information. The age-old principle still prevails \u2013 if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.<\/li>\n<li>Keep your passwords secret at all times, even if you think you can trust the source asking for your passwords.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Unfortunately it is a cyber jungle out there. Be alert at all times!<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-9575\" src=\"http:\/\/www0.sun.ac.za\/languagecentre\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/Phishing-visual_personal-data-300x168-1.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"168\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s urgent! It\u2019s from a well-known organisation! Act now! It\u2019s probably fake \u2026 If you\u2019re working for a large company, the odds are that you\u2019ve received e-mails from the IT department, warning you of phishing attacks. The reason for such alerts could be that someone clicked on a link in an e-mail that tried to&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9575,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[72,289,68,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-dialogos","category-language-learning-hub","category-our-languages","category-recent-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9576,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2593\/revisions\/9576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9575"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zone.ladybugdigital.co.za\/taalsentrumdebug2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}