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One key to many doors: How much value is in your Email address

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With the number of global email users projected to grow to 4.73 billion by 2026, email has become one of the most important platforms for communication in the digital age. For many people, an email address is their main digital identity.

Kaspersky examines what fraudsters can do with a person’s email address and how to keep it safe.

“Much like your own name, an email address has an enormous amount of information attached to it. Both our professional and personal email addresses are among major assets of interest to a growing community of sophisticated cybercriminals worldwide,” says Brandon Muller, Technical Expert for the MEA region at Kaspersky.

Most online login forms, portals, e-tailers, and mobile apps require an email address. So, even though hackers need passwords to both an individual’s email and online accounts to access, an email address is an important starting point for them to implement different fraud scenarios.

Cybercriminals can target an individual with phishing emails containing malware attachments or malicious links to fraudulent website. They can also employ sophisticated social engineering techniques to gain personal details like a person’s bank account number, ID number, physical address, phone number or passwords, amongst others.

Spoofing an email address is another risk. This involves creating a fake email address that looks like an individual’s address but has minor and tough-to-spot changes (like swapping a number with a letter or adding a dash).

Hackers can then extort information from that person’s friends and family whilst pretending to be them. This approach is often missed by spam filters on email clients.

What’s more, by using a reverse email search tool, a cybercriminal can discover who owns that specific email address. This can provide them with an important starting point to get as much freely available personal data from a person as possible.

With many people’s emails often containing their name and a memorable number, usually a date of birth, these two identifying factors are enough for many cybercriminals to begin gathering more lucrative personal data online which can be used to steal an identity or commit financial fraud.

Protecting an email address

With the risks that exposure of one’s email address (or addresses) can pose to their personal and professional privacy and wellbeing, it’s important to know how to protect an e-mail address from unauthorised access.

Strong passwords

“One of the best ways for a person to keep their email address safe is to use strong passwords. It is difficult to steal personal information with just an email address and no password. This makes a strong password of around 10 to 12 characters long, containing a mix of special characters, numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, one of the best ways to keep an email address safe,” says Muller.

Memorising passwords, especially to rarely used accounts, might be a challenge, and this is where a Password Manager can become an indispensable tool that works like a private, encrypted vault that only you can unlock. Such a solution is synced up across devices and it helps with auto-filling logins, card payment details, and personal data for forms on any website or app.

Spam filters and blocking

It is important to ensure the email provider’s spam filter is always active. This reduces the likelihood of clicking on a malicious email or link.

However, even with this in place, it is always good to remain vigilant in case such emails make it through the spam filter (which might be the case with spoofing for example) and block and report any suspicious emails to the service provider or the IT team, when it comes to business emails.

Two-factor authentication

Two-factor authentication has become a business and consumer essential. Most trusted email clients offer this service as standard. This security measure requires a person to enter additional identifying information such as a secret answer to a question or an authentication code sent to that user’s mobile phone.

Burner email account

It is also a good idea for a person to use a ‘burner’ email account when signing up to a website or app that looks suspicious. This is an email account with false or very little identifying information that can be scammed and hacked without fear of negative consequences.

Stay vigilant

Educating oneself in cybersecurity best practices is not something that can be done once. People need to stay up to date with the latest training available from the business. Home users should also keep their software up to date and never click on anything suspicious.

“You don’t know what you’ve got ‘till it’s gone’ – this phrase in most cases applies to e-mails as well. Whether for business or personal use, email has become the foundation of our digital lifestyles.

“People should remember how important it is to keep their email accounts safe while remaining vigilant against a constantly evolving cybercrime environment,” concludes Muller.


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E-Business

Attackers Target Employees with Fake HR Updates

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Kaspersky has identified an advanced phishing campaign targeting employees with personalised emails and attached documents disguised as HR policy updates.

This campaign marks a significant escalation in phishing tactics, with attackers tailoring not only the email body, but also the attachments by addressing individual recipients, showcasing an unprecedented level of customisation. The goal was to lure the victim into entering their corporate email credentials.

The attackers likely prepared by parsing employee names to make the campaign targeted and more convincing.

The emails feature a deceptive body: a fraudulent “verified sender” badge to build trust, the recipient’s name, and an invitation to open the attached file to review remote work protocols, benefits administration and security standards. However, the whole email body is in reality just an image with no real text in it; this is done to bypass email filters.

The attached document, posing as an updated “Employee Handbook,” does not contain any actual guidelines – only a title page, a table of contents with the items that have supposedly been changed highlighted in red, a page with a QR code, supposedly for going to the full document and common instructions on how to read QR codes using a phone. The document features the victim’s name multiple times to convince that this document was created specifically for them.

If the victim scans the QR code and follows the link, they land on a fraudulent page where they are asked to enter their corporate credentials, which is what the attackers are hunting for.

“This campaign demonstrates a new level of sophistication in phishing attacks, and we may be seeing a new mailing automation mechanism that generates a separate attached document and a separate image for the email body for each recipient.

“This tactic allows to scale the attack and at the same time possibly evade traditional defenses. Organisations must prioritise advanced security measures and employee education to stay ahead of these threats,” comments Roman Dedenok, Anti-Spam Expert at Kaspersky.

 


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Temu Joins INTA to Combat Counterfeits and Elevate IP Standards Worldwide

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Temu, the global online marketplace, has joined the International Trademark Association (INTA) as a corporate member and serves on its Anti-Counterfeiting Committee.

INTA is a global association that brings together more than 6,700 organizations, representing over 37,000 trademark professionals and brand owners across 181 countries. By joining INTA, Temu deepens its commitment to building a trusted online marketplace and advancing global IP protection through broader, cross-industry collaboration.

“INTA welcomes TEMU’s willingness to engage in anticounterfeiting initiatives, including in the Association’s annual Anticounterfeiting Workshop and Online Takedown Certificate Program which serve to share best practices and connect stakeholders,” said Alastair Gray, Director of Anti-Counterfeiting, INTA. “Constructive collaboration with these efforts can contribute to the protection of intellectual property rights for INTA members and support the removal of counterfeit products from the platform which ultimately protects consumers.”

At the 2025 INTA Annual Meeting held in San Diego in May, Temu participated in the Anti-Counterfeiting Committee Roundtable, serving as a moderator to facilitate discussions among brand owners, online platforms, and government officials on emerging technologies, best practices for collaboration, and strategies to strengthen global anti-counterfeiting efforts.

“Joining INTA and serving on its Anti-Counterfeiting Committee reflects Temu’s ongoing commitment to ensuring a trustworthy online shopping experience,” said a Temu spokesperson. “We value collaboration with industry peers and stakeholders and are dedicated to advancing collective efforts in intellectual property protection.”

Temu also participates in INTA-led online workshops, including the Online Platform Notice and Takedown Certification Program, which outlines the latest procedures and best practices used by e-commerce platforms and social media companies. These workshops aim to enhance the quality and accuracy of rights-holder notices, promoting more effective takedown processes and content moderation.

Since launching in 2022, Temu has made significant investments in IP enforcement. Its measures include comprehensive seller vetting and compliance training, 24/7 algorithmic monitoring with manual review, a dedicated IP protection portal and brand registry to streamline takedown submissions, and an internal enforcement team that handles claims with speed and accuracy.


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Huawei Unveils AI Computing System to Challenge Nvidia’s Flagship Product

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China’s Huawei Technologies unveiled an AI computing system on Saturday that an industry expert said rivals Nvidia’s most advanced product, as the company aims to expand its footprint in the country’s booming AI sector.

Huawei Unveils AI Computing System to Challenge Nvidia’s Flagship Product

The CloudMatrix 384 system made its public debut at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference (WAIC), a three-day event in Shanghai, attracting a large crowd to Huawei’s booth with its showcase of cutting-edge AI innovations.

The system has attracted significant interest from the global AI community since Huawei (HWT.UL) first introduced it in April. Industry analysts see it as a direct challenger to Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72, the most advanced system-level offering currently available from the U.S. chipmaker.

In an April article, Dylan Patel, founder of semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis, stated that Huawei now possesses AI system capabilities that could surpass those of Nvidia.

Huawei staff at its WAIC booth declined to comment when asked to introduce the CloudMatrix 384 system.

A spokesperson for Huawei did not respond to questions.

Huawei has become widely regarded as China’s most promising domestic supplier of chips essential for AI development, even though the company faces U.S. export restrictions.

Nvidia CEO, Jensen Huang told Bloomberg in May that Huawei had been “moving quite fast” and named the CloudMatrix as an example.

The CloudMatrix 384 system features 384 of Huawei’s latest 910C chips and, according to SemiAnalysis, surpasses Nvidia’s GB200 NVL72 in certain performance metrics, despite the latter using 72 B200 chips.

SemiAnalysis attributes this performance advantage to Huawei’s strong system design, which offsets the lower power of individual chips by leveraging a greater number of them and incorporating system-level innovations.

Huawei describes the system as utilizing a “supernode” architecture that enables ultra-high-speed interconnectivity between chips.

In June, Zhang Pingan, CEO, Huawei Cloud confirmed that the CloudMatrix 384 was already operational on Huawei’s cloud platform.


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