But fraudsters are using the foundational psychology of the fraud in more innovative and dangerous ways, too. The flimflam is perhaps the best-known example of social engineering, a range of strategies that fraudsters use to manipulate their targets into sharing personal or confidential information and enable further attack. A hacker could create a false public health warning and circulate the spoofed page to employees at a targeted company. Instead of asking for money, like the Nigerian prince, fraudsters now seek personal information.
And where the Nigerian prince was often satisfied with a few wire transfers, accessing your passwords and personal identifiers is just the first step in a much larger plan.
If the subordinate follows orders, they will have unwittingly transferred the funds to the fraudsters. A similar strategy called vendor email compromise, or VEC, is also on the rise, with Agari predicting it will be the number one attack type in In the past, such cons were a numbers game. The more people a charlatan targeted, the more likely they were to find a victim.
Some people may be at more risk than others—millennials actually report higher rates of fraud than older Americans, according to the Federal Trade Commission—but anyone could fall prey to the power play of a CEO scam or the allure or a romance racket.
Why break in when you can trick someone into opening the door? No matter the target, successful social engineering can have serious repercussions. No one is safe from the fallout. Multi-factor authentication, which requires one or more levels of identification beyond a password, is a good first step in fighting fraud, says Lukasz Olejnik , an independent cybersecurity researcher and advisor.
Still, many companies are also turning to artificial intelligence to enhance their fraud detection processes in an effort to keep humans out of the process completely. Organizations with automated phishing responses detect 44 times more malicious messages than employees, according to Agari.
Some people are greedy, desperate for love, fearful, etc. This might explain why people fall for investment scams, romance scams, the prisoner scam, and the like. Critical thinking skills across the population are weak.
There is data but, due to embarrassment, it is underreported. Yes, he was greedy. I read about that on another forum and, of course, people were in disbelief how he could be so gullible. That sucks. He has posted the occasional Youtube video on what his life has been like since. He lost money gambling on sports and the election after losing his life savings! Please Mr. Zuo, use the Couch Potato investment strategy! Zuo is a computer programmer, so presumably he is highly educated and has at least average intelligence, but intelligence is not the same thing as critical thinking.
But it hurts just a bit knowing they get people who are total strangers to me, too — particularly those on fixed incomes who are more generous, trusting, and kind-hearted than … maybe slipping a bit. I saw an interview with the victim on the news.
Almost everyone who is a victim of these crimes would have told you beforehand that they could never be fooled. They also do not ask for money to handle a warrant or anything else over the phone.
My wife fielded one the other day. The scammer claimed to be from Amazon administration, investigating a fraudulent purchase on our account. She let him get a few steps in, while she opened up our account on her laptop. No such purchase showed up. Red flags were bristling already. She asked him what was purchased and for how much.
An iPad, that cheap? No way! The next part was really strange. Do you know how hard it is to find someone at Amazon to tell about scams? As for the Amazon scam, Mark Rober walked us through how they do them. Amazon has nothing to do with the scams other than their name being used in them. A favorite phrasing of a scammer. Plus the concept of needing to fill out a form for any transaction.
We are trained to spot potential scams, so I did a little probing as I rang her up:. Me: suspicion aroused. Has someone called you and told you to read off the numbers to them after purchase? I look up and she has gone all-white, with a terrified look on her face. She started crying, I cancelled the sale immediately and went around the counter to her and told her to hang up the phone.
She started sobbing uncontrollably, saying they told her that her identity had been stolen, that someone was selling drugs in New Mexico under her name, that they were from the government and were there to help, etc. The scammers called back several times while I was talking to her, I told her to ignore them. She was completely beside herself. She said the new things about her family, that she just bought a house, etc.
It took almost a half hour to get her calmed down, her husband finally came and picked her up. Why would the government want you to pay them in gift cards?
0コメント