Content spoofing is a practice you might not have heard about, but it’s one that can cause serious problems. Essentially, content spoofing involves presenting a faked or modified website in an attempt to trick users into providing sensitive information.

It’s something you need to know about, so let’s go over:

  • How it works
  • The dangers it poses
  • How you can avoid it

How Content Spoofing Works

In most cases, content spoofing involves modifying information and links in a legitimate website. When you look at the location bar, you’ll see what looks like the right URL, but the user will have altered the page. When you enter your sensitive information into what seems like a legitimate form, that information will be collected for identity theft or some other fraudulent purpose.

The Dangers of Content Spoofing

Unlike email spoofing, content spoofing isn’t one of the more well-known malicious activities. When it comes to email phishing attacks like BEC (Business Email Compromise), the attacker would usually impersonate high-level employees of a company, or even an outside vendor sometimes, in order to lure people in on the basis of misplaced trust (you can head to https://abnormalsecurity.com/blog/what-is-business-email-compromise for more information on BEC). However, that doesn’t mean that there’s any shortage of candidates for people who want to engage in content spoofing. In fact, a recent study by WhiteHat security tested 15,000 websites and found that 86% had at least one serious vulnerability that could be exploited by hackers, and content spoofing would have been possible in over half of those sites.

So, content spoofing is something you should worry about. In many cases, such efforts aim to collect relatively innocuous data, such as your email address. However, content spoofing scams can be set up to collect far more important data, such as:

  • Credit Card Numbers
  • Banking Information
  • Birth Dates
  • Usernames
  • Passwords

How to Avoid Content Spoofing

Content spoofing is easy enough to avoid; in fact, simply knowing the practice exists means you’re more in-the-know than most people. If you want to prevent falling foul of content spoofing, make sure you follow these tips:

  • Don’t click on links circulated via social networking sites or instant messaging platforms
  • Check the URL by visiting the correct domain name and trying to navigate to the desired page from there.