MailSafi Glossary of Terms

Social engineering

When it comes to email, social engineering attacks involve sending out email communication that invokes urgency, panic, fear, curiosity, or similar emotions in the victim so as to trick them into revealing personal or confidential information, click a malicious link or open malicious attachments contained in email messages. Phishing is one of the most popular social engineering attacks.

Social engineering effectively uses psychological manipulation to trick users into making security mistakes or giving away sensitive information.