Aryeh Goretsky

Social engineering – from typewriter to PC

There is a common belief that all sorts of problems can be solved by technology if only something or other. Unfortunately, whatever something or other is, it almost inevitably tends to be something that computers cannot solve. Social engineering, defined as psychological manipulation to produce a desired effect on people's behavior, is one of those problems because it is fundamentally not a technological problem but a psychological one.

It's also important to keep in mind that the tricksters, con artists, and other scammers who use social engineering have access to the same technologies as those who defend against them and are subject to the same types...