You wake up on a typical morning, walk to the kitchen, put on a pot of coffee, and pick up the newspaper or fire up your computer to read the daily news.
Suddenly your phone beeps and vibrates. You check it, and there’s an urgent text message saying your phone may have been compromised, referencing an actual social media conversation you recently had with a friend. It includes a link that you need to urgently click on, to prevent your personal information from being stolen.
You click on the link, and the web page (seemingly from Google or Apple) looks exactly like you would expect it to, with perfect logos and formatting; the text is perfectly worded with no spelling mistakes. There’s a technical explanation about why they flagged your device as potentially “compromised,” and a normal-looking button saying “Install required update.” Which you click on. After a few moments looking at an installation progress bar, you then get a comforting response in green text saying: “Issue successfully resolved—no evidence of compromise detected.”
