Spear Phishing

When a hacker tries to phish a specific individual, it is called “spear phishing”, targeted phishing.

These spear phishing emails can be harder to detect than mass phishing emails.

They can:

  1. Appear to come from someone you know
  2. Can be very carefully written
  3. Can be very carefully designed
  4. Be based on research about you
However, they can still use fear (threatening or urgent tone) to motivate you into action, and exhibit other red flags.