A technique that defeats security precautions in place by exploiting human vulnerabilities. Social engineering scams can be both online (such as receiving email messages that ask you to click on the attachment, which is actually malware) and offline (such as receiving a phone call from someone posing as a representative from your credit card company. Regardless of the method selected, the purpose of a social engineering attack remains the same - to get the targeted user to perform an action of the attacker's choice.