What is Vishing Attack? Learn How to Prevent It

June 12, 2025 By Nancy William No Comments 8 minutes

 al’eIf you’re aware of some of the most infamous cyberattacks, like phishing, then you might have heard of a vishing attack. Vishing is another kind of phishing cybercrime where the perpetrator uses various technology or software to completely change their voices, pushing victims to give in sensitive data. 

This kind of attack is so convincing that you might feel like you’re speaking to a relative, a friend, or even your bank account manager. However, despite a Vishing attack being one of the most common cybercrimes, there are still some ways to prevent them from happening.  

Let’s get started! 

What is Vishing?

Vishing is one form of a cyberattack that utilizes various voice technologies. Why? It’s used to conduct fraudulent activities like collecting and using personally identifiable information, also known as PII. 

Here, the attacker pretends to be a known person or authoritative figure, such as the hospital staff, your realtor, credit card company, a relative, or even government officials. 

These vishing attacks are done via fake and untraceable phone numbers and by using VOIP applications or adding smishing attack techniques. This is how they’re made to appear more believable.

What makes it worse is when vishing attack techniques now use 2FA methods that make it extremely difficult to differentiate between real and illegitimate calls.  

How Do Vishing Attacks Work?

The term vishing is short for voice phishing, a kind of engineered cyberattack involving fake voices. As mentioned, they are induced to gather sensitive and identifiable data like your credit card details, bank numbers, social security details, addresses, and much more. Here are the steps on how vishing attacks are engineered: 

Impersonates and Builds Trust

It starts with the victim receiving an unknown call from an attacker who pretends to be a legitimate user from an organization, the bank, or even a family member. The attacker can easily change their voice to someone you already know using AI voice alteration software. This causes the victim to build trust with the attacker. After trust is established through any means necessary, the vishing attack moves on to the second step. 

Attack Tactics

Vishing attacks are usually conducted by social engineering techniques. How does it work? The attacker, once having created trust, moves on to induce a sense of fear or urgency among the victims. This way, they’re made to reveal sensitive information. The attacker urges the user to send in credit card information, OPT codes, and more, claiming that their bank accounts are about to shut down or have been breached. 

Request for Information

Now that we’ve discussed the tactics of how vishing scams are conducted, the next step is for them to ask you for personal information. They might even have your ID card numbers and ask you to reconfirm them. After that, the information asked moves on to full names, house address, bank statements, credit card numbers, OPT numbers, and much more. 

Pressure & Inducing Vulnerabilities

It’s a fact that most people don’t work or think well when under pressure or rushed. This is why vishing attackers induce the maximum amount of pressure and dig deep into vulnerabilities. This causes victims to hand in information without thinking twice. 

What Kinds of Vishing Attacks Are There?

There are several kinds of vishing attack scams. These forms include:

Robocall

One kind of vishing attack is called a Robocall. This attack induces a prerecorded call to every and any phone number that is registered in certain area codes. It’s performed via computer software to pre-record voices for calls. Through this attack, victims or targets are asked for their names, credit card information, and many other kinds of sensitive information. The only bright side is that these robocall cases are now becoming quite common, which means more and more people are aware of them.

Caller ID Spoofing

This kind of vishing attack employs software to mimic a real caller ID from official agencies; this kind of cyberattack can be particularly harmful. Scammers typically attempt to pose as a government organization, police division, or hospital in order to generate a sense of urgency and persuade the victim to give out information they otherwise wouldn’t.

VoIP

VoIP services are usually used for some of the best innovations in business. However, these services are now being used by hackers or to engineer scams. It’s when hackers get fake phone numbers and, at times,  merge them with robocall techniques, despite being handled by humans. However, when things like this happen, it’s always wise to ask for more information and cross-question. There is never really a hurry to make payments.  

Dumpster Diving

This kind of attack is usually targeted at large corporations. As the name suggests, in literal form, the vishing attack involves hackers deep diving into a company’s old archives or online trash. This is why it’s always crucial for companies to trash or delete any shred of evidence with important information. 

Client Call

This kind of vishing attack is mostly affiliated with the dumpster diving attack. When the attacker dives for information in a company device or even remote devices, they can find all sorts of invoices or company payment slips and create a fake call, pretending to be a client, vendor, partner, or more. 

Voice Mail Scam

This is slightly different. It involves hackers flooding a user’s inbox with voicemails telling them to delete them before the memory is full. When users click on these emails, there’s always a link in them. These links are malicious, and once the user clicks on them, their data or other kinds of sensitive data is stolen. In other cases, these malicious links attached to voicemail emails redirect users to websites that push them to download (hidden) viruses or malware on their devices.  

Tech Support Call

This is one of the most common and severe kinds of vishing attack scams that mostly target the elderly or technically-disabled people. There are many who are not so acquainted with technology. When this happens, a scammer marks a certain target, and while pretending to make repairs online, asks the user for their passwords. One simple password can unveil a lot of sensitive information. 

How to Detect a Vishing Scam?

If you’re new to vishing scams, here are a few ways for you to detect them: 

• The tone of the caller will be very demanding and have a sense of great urgency. You need to know that bank officials never force people to hand over bank details. 
• Brings in government authority. There is no way a government official will urgently ask for information over the phone. You will always be asked to come into a professional setting and in person. 
• Asking for confidential information. Banking officers or hospitals have certain codes of conduct and would never discuss sensitive or private information over a call. 

How to Prevent a Vishing Attack

Now that you know how to detect a vishing scam, here are a few methods to prevent it: 

• Unknown numbers: Be cautious about unknown numbers contacting you out of the blue, especially when you least expect it. 
• Too many details: When the caller forcefully asks you for information like credit card details, PIN codes, social media account IDs, house addresses, medical statements, it’s a scam. 
• Immediately put on hold: If you’re picking up a call, check to see if you’re automatically asked to stay on hold by an automated voice. There are high chances that you’re about to be scammed. 
• Constant calls: No authentic source would call you repeatedly if you cut the call on them. That is showing signs of trying to corner you into giving in the information they require. 
• Verify the number: Before giving information, verify the number with the company name they use.  
• Use a spam filter: There are many call carrier services that offer spam and fraud call filters. Apply for it. 
• Asks for OPT and passwords: A legitimate source would never ask for an OTP code or password, and even if they do, you are not supposed to hand it over, no matter what. 
• Intense pressure: If the pressure of the caller gets too intense, hang up immediately and seek professional help from the authorities. 

FAQs – Vishing Attack

To Conclude

And that’s about it! You now know what a vishing attack is. We even discussed the different kinds that exist. Plus, how to detect vishing scams, and methods to prevent it. Always be vigilant while taking calls from strangers, even if they sound like a friend or family member. Speaking from experience, it’s always better to do a little research to stop them in the future. Other than this, for extra security against malicious links or emails, connect to the best VPN for it.