The other major flaw is the inherent capacity of human beings to try doing as much as possible with the least possible effort. Combining these two flaws, it creates fertile ground for pulling a scam on Joe Public.
Although the modern mobile phone has a built in browser, the capacity of the browser is still limited. It cannot store a whole list of favourite sites, because for all its power, the device’s memory is still limited. Thank the luck stars for the e-mail on the phone. This allows extending the reach of my browser because links can be stored as e-mail. Most modern e-mail programs are browser-aware, so the links in the e-mail are active links.
The stage is set for the scam. An e-mail arrives at the phone. It is e-mail from a bank. If it is not the user’s bank, he ignores it, accepting that the e-mail was accidentally sent in error. If it is from the phone owner’s bank, the owner will in more than 50% of the cases click on the link and if the user does not act intelligently, they are in for a nasty surprise. The link will purportedly come from the bank and will look genuine, but it is a scam. It will either be a man-in-the-middle attack or a harvest site[i]. The user will either execute the link’s request and be scammed or they will not respond.
But it is not here that the biggest scam happened. The user, in his mad rush, remembers some payment not done and he now uses the mobile browser, but since he does not remember the bank’s link, he grabs it out of the e-mail.
The user has been scammed and will lose a packet before realising. What then – a whole lot of drama with banks, lawyers and police – and the monies may never be recovered.
Users watch out what you do with your new shiny mobile phone, Never accept anything arriving on that device on face-value. It will cost you monies, reputation and it might even lead to identity-theft.
[i] If it is a man-in-the-middle attack, the user’s account is stripped while they are on-line doing transactions and this is not directly evident. If it is a harvest site, it will gather the information and use it to siphon monies from the bank account after the fact. tagheuerformula.
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