Fighting Off Cyberscammers
Here’s another recent cyberscammer attack that happened to an elderly family member.
She hired a paving company to resurface her driveway. We checked the company out and it came highly recommended by several customers.
The paving company emailed her a copy of the contract, asking her to complete it, scan it and return it. The terms were simple: no payment until the job was completed to her satisfaction.
But the next day, “the paver” sent her another email request:
“Please send a 50% deposit and kindly snap the check and send to my email.”
I knew this was a scam right away. The telltale words were “kindly snap.”
The term “kindly” is a word cyberscammers commonly use. The word “snap” is awkward, and awkwardness is another telltale sign of a scam email.
It turned out that the paving company owner’s email account had been hacked and that the scammer had contacted several other customers hoping to pull the same scam.
How did the cyberscammers breach the company’s computer? The owner may have clicked on malicious code in a fake email from his bank or some other institution he trusted.
Or he may have made the mistake of creating an email password based on his telephone number, address or birth date — details a cyberscammer could easily guess.
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Copyright 2021 Tom Purcell, All Rights Reserved. Credit: Cagle.com
