According to the consumer fraud report these are the top scams at the moment that you should be aware
of.
These are also known as social engineering attacks.
Social engineering is a term used in the security industry to refer to attacks that central weaknesses
in the human being.
So the first is this one which is Internet merchants scams.
You can see here you purchased something online but it is either never delivered or it is not what it
claimed it was or it's simply defective.
Very common.
The most common phishing and spoofed e-mails we have discussed these already e-mails and messages that
pretend to be from a company organization government agency or something like that trying to get you
to perform an action click on a link and provide personal details or download a file and the file turns
out to be malware as top on the list of social engineering attacks attempted fraud or attempted Combs.
And then you have fake prizes sweepstakes free gifts lottery scams you receive an e-mail claiming you
have won a prize lottery or gift.
And you only have to pay a small fee to claim it or cover handling costs.
No genuine lottery asks for money to pay fees or notifies its winners via email paying upfront fees
for anything is a sign that something is wrong.
This is a classic scam and it's called the advance fee fraud you got fake check payments.
So you sell something online or through Craigslist or something like that and you're paid with some
sort of phony check recovery and refund companies a scammer contact you and claims you owe money on
a debt or the scammer offers to recover the money that you've lost in a previous scam.
Don't believe it.
Computer performance scams like equipment and software scammers claim to offer technical support for
computer problems and charge a fee to fix non-existent problems like the ad where we went through the
claims that there was nonexistent malware on the machine.
But if you buy their product by magic it will be gone.
Another scam scholarship student loan and financial aid scams.
For a fee a research company offers to conduct a customized search for scholarships for grants for students
to apply for.
Scammers take the money and run or provide just to worthless.
This and the online dating scams fake profiles of scammers posing as attractive men and women.
They then claim they need money to help in an emergency.
Typically when they claim to be out of the country on a business trip I mean I know at least one person
that this has happened to personally and they fell for in fact I think I know two people that have fallen
for this trick and they're actually both women.
Facebook fake friends scam.
Did you ever get a friend request from Facebook from someone that you already thought that you had friended.
If you accept you may have friended a scammer con artist nurtures a relationship online builds trust
and tries to then come binge you to send them money because they're a victim of some sort of crisis.
EBay an auction seller scams scammers posing as buyers convince sellers into shipping goods prior to
receiving payment.
Usually the fake buyer claims it's an emergency like a child's birthday and asks the seller to ship
the same day the seller receives an email that appears as though it came from Paypal or whoever the
payment company is for the payment.
But emails like that are easy for the scammer to fake.
You should always check with your payment company on their website to make sure the payment is actually
there.
My mother actually had a couple of people contact her when she tried to sell something on a local listings
site that because she is well wised to these sorts of scams because of me.
She told them where to go but she said she could see how people could be easily fooled and that they
were really pushy and aggressive to get to send the goods before payment.
They were somewhere not in the country where the item was being sold which is always a warning sign.
They also ask for lots of personal information up front.
Don't give it.
They will try to use this information don't even provide your full name.
Use your first name fine or even a fake name.
A great Web site for keeping up to date with the latest scams is this one the consumer fraud reporting
Web site.
And there's also a UK one which is very good which is action fraud and which is from the UK police.
We discuss ways to avoid these sorts of social engineering scams both through changing our behavior
and also through technical security controls throughout the course.