The Geek Squad Phishing Scam is Costing People Lots of Money
If you are a frequent reader of our blog, you know all about phishing scams. They are emails and messages sent that are designed to extort money and gain access to computers and networks for nefarious purposes. The popular IT support company Geek Squad, a subsidiary of Best Buy, is the latest company caught up in such a scam.
Let’s take a look at how the scam works and how you can avoid becoming its next victim.
The Scam Overview
The scam starts benign enough: users will get an email that tells the user that their Geek Squad membership has been renewed. Typically the people that receive this email aren’t members of any recurring Geek Squad service, so they call the toll-free number listed in the email to find out what the deal is. The operator on the other end of the line then agrees to refund the money, but demands access to your online banking account to quickly refund the money. They ask for remote access to your computer to show you how to securely do this.
Then things go completely sideways.
The technician then tells the user that something has gone wrong and tells the user that they mistakenly sent a large amount of money to their bank. Using intimidation and accusations, they get the user to then withdraw money from their bank account and send it to an address to settle up. These fake technicians (fraudsters) will then try to extort more money out of users by saying that the parcel containing the money was never received. It has cost hundreds of people hundreds of thousands of dollars over the first half of 2022 alone.
So, you don’t think you could fall for such a thing? That’s what every victim thinks until they are thousands of dollars lighter in their bank account. Last year, it was Norton Antivirus and during the height of the pandemic it was the IRS and Amazon. These scams never stop, so you should know how they operate so that you can do your best to stay secure. These scams:
- Use the name of a popular and well-established organization
- Send emails with attachments or links that, if you look past the frenetic content of the message, seem completely suspect.
- Use urgency to stress the user out and make mistakes they normally wouldn’t.
Questions About Phishing You Need to Consider
If you think a message you’ve received could be a potential phishing attack, you should ask yourself these three questions:
Who Sent It?
Are there irregularities in the address it came from, are names or suffixes misspelled, or does it come from someone who has never corresponded with you before?
What Does the Message Contain?
Are there any links shared in it, does a strange URL appear when you hover your cursor over them, are there any attachments?
What Does the Message Actually Say?
Are there spelling and grammar issues in a professional email, is there an excessive sense of urgency or time sensitivity communicated, or is there a request to do something like share data or forward access credentials?
Phishing scams aren’t ever going to stop, so knowing how to identify and thwart attacks before you are out money or your organization deals with a data breach is extremely important. Let’s talk about the best practices to safeguard your organization from cyber crimes.
Check back soon for more great cybersecurity content.
Hackers Use the Pandemic to Send Out Phishing Threats
The first half of this year has seen its fair share of ups and downs, especially on a global scale. With a global pandemic still taking the world by storm, it’s despicable that hackers would take advantage of the opportunity to make a quick buck using phishing tactics. Yet, here we are. Let’s take a look at how hackers have turned the world’s great misfortune into a boon, as well as how you can keep a lookout for these threats.
According to reports from SecureList, spam and phishing trends in Q1 of 2021 relied heavily on COVID-19 and the buzz generated by it. Let’s take a look at some of the major threats that took advantage of the pandemic.
Stimulus Payment Scandals
The first couple months of 2021 saw businesses and individuals receiving payments from governments, such as economic impact payments or business bail-outs. Hackers took advantage of this opportunity to try to convince users to hand over their credentials through the use of messages that both looked and sounded professional. As is often the case with phishing messages, some users of specific banks were targeted through the use of near-identical websites designed to steal credentials and fool users. Others tried to convince users to enter information by convincing them that the latest details on the bank’s COVID-19 practices could be found on the other side of links or sensitive information forms.
The Vaccine Race
For a while, the COVID-19 vaccine was a bit tricky to get your hands on. While things have improved significantly in recent months, the initial rush to get vaccinated triggered many would-be hackers to try their hand at vaccination phishing emails that replicated the look and language of communication from health officials. Users would have to click on a link in the message, which would then redirect them to a form for plugging in personal information and, in some cases, banking credentials. Even those who already received vaccinations were not safe, as there were fake surveys circulating urging people to fill them out and claim prizes for doing so.
What You Can Do
Don’t let hackers take advantage of the cracks in your business’ defenses. Phishing attacks can come in countless forms, so it is your responsibility to protect your business from them. Here are some ways that you can make sure your organization is secured from phishing attempts.
Filter Out Spam
A spam filter can keep the majority of threats out of your inbox, but the unfortunate fact is that most phishing emails are probably going to make it past the spam filter. Therefore, you will want to take more advanced tactics against these threats.
Train your Employees
Training your employees on how to identify threats gives them the power to avoid threats that do manage to get past your defenses. Teach them what to look for and you’ll be giving yourself a better chance of overcoming them.
Implement Unified Threat Management
No matter how well trained your employees are, it helps to have just a little bit of reassurance that you have done all you can to secure your business. This is what a UTM does; it’s a single security solution that can optimize your network’s protection.
Point North Networks, Inc., can help your business keep itself secure. Not only can we implement great security solutions, but we can also help to train your employees, including regular “tests” where we send out fake phishing emails to see who is and is not paying attention. To learn more about how this can help your organization, reach out to us at 651-234-0895.
