Absolute Beginner's Guide to Wi-Fi® Wireless Networking

“Social” Engineering

Social engineering is a term for tricking a person into revealing their password or other confidential information.

A classic social engineering trick is to send email claiming to be a system administrator. The email will claim to need your password for some important system administration work, and ask you to email it back. Often, the email will appear to be from a real system administrator, and be sent to everyone on a network, hoping that at least one or two users will fall for the trick.

You can also be scammed for your password via telephone. In fact, theft of credit card information or identity information via “dumpster diving” (or from a restaurant credit card receipt) are examples of social engineering that do not ...