THREE NEW ONLINE SCAMS TO WATCH OUT FOR
Welcome to the latest installment of our ongoing series scam alerts – created to give us all a fighting chance of not clicking our way into trouble when trying to achieve inbox zero…
In the first of the digital scams making the rounds in our area, hackers break into a relative’s Facebook profile and use that identity to send Facebook Messages to other relatives proclaiming a wonderful something-for-nothing money opportunity that they have subscribed to, even showing photos of boxes of cash they have received. Looks weirdly convincing when it comes from your mom or grandfather.
Let your relative know they need to contact Facebook and tell them their account has been compromised. Make necessary password changes and maybe add two-factor authentication.
The second is a warning email (generated by bots) using the email form on your own website to send your business an email accusing you of using a photo or image without the creator’s permission and warning you of further action. Lately, we’ve been receiving at least one a day. No specifics are given except a (non-traceable) Google Sites link.
Don’t click it. Just delete. You can’t block it because it’s coming from your own form, and then you won’t receive any legitimate emails.
The last is specially for those businesses that have set up email notifications of new business voicemails, or telephone service outages. It will appear to come from your own email, or from that of the admin account of your website – as usual, it will contain a link that claims to be to your voicemail, or to reset your phone modem, or cloud-based server.
That link will connect to absolutely none of those things.
Stay vigilant out there, friends, and as ever, let our team know via the Contact the Chamber page if you run into any other scams that our businesses or general community should be made aware of.