Phishing attacks cost businesses billions annually. Learn to identify deceptive domains, spoofed emails, and typosquatting attacks before they steal your data β or your money.
Global losses from phishing and payment fraud attacks
$0lost to cybercrime globally per minute
Attackers use these well-known techniques to trick users into visiting malicious sites. Study each one carefully.
Characters that look identical but are different β like Cyrillic "Π°" vs Latin "a". Your eye cannot tell them apart.
Banking on users making common typing errors. One missing or swapped letter leads to the attacker's site.
The brand name appears as a subdomain, making the URL look legitimate β but the real domain is the attacker's.
Switching the top-level domain from .com to .net, .co, .in or others to register a lookalike domain.
Adding words like "secure", "verify", "alert" or "login" to panic users into clicking without thinking.
Internationalized Domain Names use Unicode characters that look pixel-for-pixel identical to Latin letters. Extremely dangerous.
Fake invoices and renewal notices are sent from domains mimicking your bank or software provider to steal payment info.
The "From" display name says "PayPal Support" but the actual email domain is a fake. Mobile clients often hide the real address.
Test yourself: can you spot the difference before looking at the label?
Always check the sender domain β not just the display name. Attackers make the display name look legitimate while hiding the real address.
In any URL, only the registrable domain (last two parts before the path) tells you who really owns the site.
Hover to identify the real domain in each URL
Enter any domain URL and see an instant risk analysis. Use this to evaluate suspicious links before clicking.
Practical steps for developers, security teams, and everyday users to protect against domain-based attacks.
if "brand" in domainA typical business email compromise attack that results in financial loss β step by step.
Registers something like yourcompany-invoices.com for under $10. Sets up spoofed email and fake invoice portal within hours.
Scrapes LinkedIn and your website for finance team names, supplier relationships, and ongoing project names to make the phish convincing.
A convincing invoice PDF arrives from the fake domain, referencing real project names. Display name shows a known supplier. The urgency framing ("payment overdue") triggers quick action.
A finance team member processes the $85,000 invoice without verifying the domain. The money hits a mule account instantly and begins moving internationally.
The real supplier calls asking about a late payment. By now the money has moved through 3 jurisdictions. Bank recall success rate at this point: under 20%.
Total damage: wire amount + legal fees + investigation costs + reputational damage. One domain check at the time of payment would have prevented all of this.
Can you identify which domains are real and which are attacks? Take the quiz to find out.