Leveraging Knowledge to Manage Your Data Risks
Seeing the victims in Kentucky following the devastating floods is heartbreaking. Even more distressing is seeing those who are trying to help by donating funds to the relief effort victimized as well.
Scammers know that people with good hearts who are trying to help others are susceptible to relief scams. All they are trying to…
2021 will go down in our minds as many things, including the year in which more people reported fraud and the highest dollar amount of fraud losses in history. Not a great statistic.
According to the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Sentinel Network Data Book 2021 (the Data Book), the FTC received 5.7 million reports from…
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.”…
I think that people in general are decent and good. There are always some bad apples, but during crises most people want to help others. During the coronavirus pandemic, many people are doing everything they can to help others, including assisting neighbors, family members, friends and health care workers. Charitable organizations have stepped up to…
With more companies hiring, online recruiting scams have re-emerged to prey on job seekers and employers. The Better Business Bureau tracked more than 3,000 recruiting scams in the first 10 months of 2018 with losses in the million dollars.
The online recruiting scam works this way: the scammer fraudulently uses a company’s name and logo, and perhaps the names of the company’s employees handling recruiting or human resources, to solicit applications from job seekers for fake jobs. Many times the companies are household names or long established, which gives the scam an air of legitimacy. Sometimes the solicitation comes by email, but most often it is posted on a professional or recruiting website or social media platform. Like most phishing schemes, the scammer’s email address is similar to, but not the same as the legitimate company’s email address.
Continue Reading Recruiting Scams on the Rise
This writer has been lamenting for years about the fact that Medicare recipients’ Social Security numbers are included on the face of the card. This is an unnecessary risk posed to Medicare recipients, which are primarily senior citizens, some of our most vulnerable citizens, who are already preyed upon by scammers.
Medicare has recognized the…
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a scam alert this week notifying consumers that it has received an up-tick in complaints that scammers are calling consumers claiming they are from the Social Security Administration.
The scammers tell the individual that there has been a computer problem at the Social Security Administration and that they need…
Happy National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. I wish it was more uplifting than the current state of affairs, but it has never been so important.
One of the most recent scam to hit consumers is by impersonating Netflix.
If you are a Netflix user, beware of a new scam that looks like an email that comes…
It has been so difficult to watch the news reports of the devastation and havoc left in the wake of Hurricane Harvey, and now anticipated this weekend by Hurricane Irma, which is being reported as the most powerful storm to hit the Caribbean and the southeast in almost a century.
Not only do those who…
In the latest example of security risks attendant to initial coin offerings (ICOs), on August 21st the blockchain startup Enigma reported that online scammers used fake solicitations for an ICO presale to steal approximately $500,000 in ether (a virtual currency) from investors.
Enigma is a blockchain startup incubated at MIT Media Lab that is in the process of rolling out its first product, known as Catalyst. Catalyst is described as a platform providing data sets and developmental tools specifically geared for hedge funds focused on cryptocurrency markets. Enigma’s funding was to be derived, in part, from a planned a token sale on September 11, 2017, with a goal of raising $20 million worth of ether. …
Continue Reading Scammers Strike Enigma Initial Coin Offering
