Leveraging Knowledge to Manage Your Data Risks
In response to a rash of employment offer scams, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently issued a scam alert intended to educate job seekers so they can avoid being victimized.
Not only are individuals subject to these scams, but legitimate businesses are spoofed and used to conduct the scams and they only find that out…
Another fall-out from the pandemic is that impersonation fraud has increased dramatically. According to the Federal Trade Commission, “the COVID-19 pandemic has spurred a sharp spike in impersonation fraud, as scammers capitalize on confusion and concerns around shifts in the economy stemming from the pandemic.” Impersonation fraud costs “have increased an alarming 85 percent…
Gift card scams continue to be one of the most frequently-reported scams to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). According to its recent Scam Alert entitled Scammers are tricking more people into buying gift cards, “40,000 people reported losing a whopping $148 million in gift cards to scammers during the first nine months of 2021.”…
My phone was ringing this week with inquiries from clients, friends and acquaintances who received a Form 1099 in the mail for an unemployment claim that they did not file, asking what should they do.
The statistics on the successful filing of fraudulent unemployment claims throughout the country in 2020 are staggering. The pandemic created…
The Department of Justice recently indicted four men—two of whom are located in Canada and two in New York—for a mass-mailing scheme that bilked thousands of senior citizens out of tens of millions of dollars.
According to the indictments, the accused Canadian fraudsters sent mail to thousands of elderly individuals whose names and addresses they…
On June 3, 2019, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a fraud alert to notify consumers about genetic testing fraud schemes (the Alert). According to the OIG, fraudulent actors are using the provision of free genetic testing kits to obtain Medicare information from unwitting consumers, and…
A new Harris Poll for the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), which called 1,006 U.S. adults for the report, shows interesting statistics regarding American adults’ attitudes and fears about identity theft and financial loss as a result of cyber intrusions. The poll’s conclusion is that 48 percent of U.S. adults believe that identity theft will…
In an effort to combat an increasing number of fraudulent transfers carried out using its network, SWIFT, the international bank transfer network, announced this month that it is adding new tools and controls designed to prevent fraudulent transfers in real time.
SWIFT reported that the new tools integrate into the SWIFT system directly without the need for new hardware or software and allow financial institutions to screen SWIFT message flows according to a set of pre-defined parameters. Suspicious money transfer requests would be immediately flagged and can be reviewed by a financial institution before processing.
Continue Reading SWIFT Shores Up Network Security With Real Time Cybersecurity Tools
The New York Times reported last week that “hundreds of fake retail and product apps have popped up in Apple’s App Store in recent weeks”—just in time to deceive holiday shoppers.
The Apps use well-known brand logos to deceive consumers. According to some, there has been a dramatic increase in fake apps this year over…
With more and more information online, it is easy to accumulate a lot of information about individuals just by using a search engine. Scammers use online information to build profiles of victims and then use different scams to try to defraud victims, particularly the elderly and vulnerable populations. But even the most savvy can become…
