An Uptick In Scam Calls You Should Be Aware Of
This issue of Tech Talk News is one that you may want to share with family and friends, especially older folks who tend to be more trusting of people in general. Much like phishing attacks, a scam phone call is often tailored to you. This is one of the reasons why data privacy can be very important as we covered in Volume 8, Issue 2 of TTN (the mailing can be found on the Ridge Support website).
How Are They Personalized?
We have all experienced a call where a robot on the other line is talking to you, but there are more personalized ones being made today. There are actually office buildings where people go to work just to make these calls. It is more effective because they are a human and not some pre-recorded message. If they are able to collect data on you via social media or other sites, then they may be able to target things about you like using the names of relatives, your area of residence and even services that you frequently use.
What Are Their Schemes?
There are a few different schemes, but the three most common have to do with a warrant for your arrest, a family member in need or a call claiming to come from Microsoft or Apple Support.
The version that claims to have a warrant for your arrest will ask you to pay a "fine" in order to stop officers from breaking into your house to arrest you. The family version will often use something along the line of a child or grandchild that has found themselves in a sticky situation and needs money to get out. The support call claims to owe you a refund and will look to gain access to your computer and have you go to your online bank account where they will "accidentally deposit" too much money into your account by adding a couple 0's onto the end of their "deposit". In reality, they are just editing the display on your screen. They then ask that you return the excess. Often times they will ask that you make the payment via gift cards so that they cannot be traced back to them.
What To Do
The simplest method to avoid being scammed is to remain leery of random callers claiming things that might not make sense and to do things like contact your family member directly to see if there truly is an issue. There is also never a reason that any of these things would need to be paid via gift card, so if the person on the phone tells you not to talk to anyone about the call and to buy gift cards, it's a scam.
If the call is supposedly coming from the police or another government agency, consider calling these agencies yourself directly to see if they are actually looking for you for some reason and reached out to you through the phone instead of mail.
As far as stopping these scams, the FCC is currently working to develop methods to regulate and stop these scams and things like robo-calls from happening, but until that occurs, remaining cognizant and up to date on the scams remains the best defense against them. If you want to learn a bit more about their tactics and be amused for a bit, considers searching for videos of scambaiters on YouTube.
We strive to look out for the best interest of our customers and their procurement in the IT venue. Be it hardware, software or service related, we want to guide you in the most effective manner possible.
