Phishing scam on 2020 Tokyo Olympics tickets detected

Meanwhile, British Airlines just had a two-week theft of customer data from its website and app affecting about 380,000 payment cards. And it’s certainly not the first time we’ve heard about such cases with non-Japanese companies.

As for phishing of individuals, even those who are supposedly well-educated fall for it. Recently heard about a case involving a “national” university here that ended up in a huge mess because of phishing that hooked at least a few professors. And these are people who are constantly receiving warnings and messages about security from the department that manages the university’s email and websites system.

Good god, this reads like a cheesy movie plot.

but in my experience with Japanese companies, they seem to be in a worse state overall than in other countries I've dealt with

Companies are a whole different issue and I am in full agreement there - data security questions are usually met with blank stares when I am consulting for engineering teams. Now that Japan has joined a big EU trade agreement, (some) companies are scrambling to finally understand what GDPR implications will mean for them. Others are blissfully unaware and are going to be in for a rude awakening in 2020 - global trends suggest attacks will ramp up for any country hosting a major event.

For individuals and phishing attacks, the Japanese language provides a surprisingly good barrier. An email full of grammatical errors makes even elderly victims pick up on something being strange.

Agree with @yild.

In my opinion, far too many Japanese stay in their bubble of ignorance regarding these types of hackers, it's always "some one else", until they get scammed

You missed the American part in the first sentence of this article.

@Yubaru I work in InfoSec and can tell you with absolute conviction that the rest of the world is just as bad as Japan at how well they understand data security. We hear about scams here more frequently in the news, but this is a massive global issue.

We deal in security fairly deeply as well. It's true that security is a world-wide issue, but in my experience with Japanese companies, they seem to be in a worse state overall than in other countries I've dealt with. That said, I have no numbers to support that, so I could be entirely incorrect.

@Yubaru I work in InfoSec and can tell you with absolute conviction that the rest of the world is just as bad as Japan at how well they understand data security. We hear about scams here more frequently in the news, but this is a massive global issue.

Brian Krebs (consumer security expert) has this about targeted phishing : https://krebsonsecurity.com/2018/08/the-year-targeted-phishing-went-mainstream/

If you didn't go looking for it (tickets or anything else) and actively request an email follow-up by providing an email address, then never assume any email is in your best interest.

In my opinion, far too many Japanese stay in their bubble of ignorance regarding these types of hackers, it's always "some one else", until they get scammed.

The level of ignorance is astounding for a country that is supposed to be technologically advanced, and "net" savvy(not).