Your Mouse May Be Your Worst Enemy

Cybercriminals have mastered the art of exploiting human nature, turning our trust and busyness against us. This vulnerability is statistically undeniable. The Verizon Business 2025 Data Breach Investigations
Report shows that nearly 60% of data breaches involve the human element, whether through simple error, manipulation, or falling victim to social engineering. Our own clicks are cybercrime’s greatest allies. The vast majority of breaches are enabled by a few predictable clicking behaviors. To protect yourself and your organization, exercise extreme vigilance before engaging in any of the following:

• Clicking suspicious reset links. Interacting with unsolicited “password reset” or “account verification” requests, especially those for services you haven’t recently used, often leads directly to credential-harvesting pages.
• Trusting fake notifications. Clicking links within unexpected parcel delivery alerts, invoice demands, or urgent financial messages, even if they appear to use known company branding. These are common pretexting scams.
• Running spoofed updates. Engaging with legitimate-looking software update pop-ups or security alerts found on a suspicious website. These often install malware or compromise your
  system under the guise of security.
• Bypassing MFA defenses. Responding to phishing attempts designed to trick users into inputting their multifactor authentication codes. This technique, known as MFA harvesting, is increasingly common.
• Falling for the “trust trap.” Clicking through bogus verification steps like “I am not a robot” or CAPTCHAs that are actually malicious infrastructure designed to bypass security tools and redirect you to a malicious download or site.

Staying ahead of scammers’ advancements might seem overwhelming, but Jeanne D’Arc has resources to keep you in the know to defend your money and data. Visit our Fraud & Theft Protection page and subscribe to the Money Mill Blog for more information and best practices to keep your data and money safe.