“Fraudsters have never been so ruthless with their tactics, and they’re increasingly using ones that are far more personal and harder to spot. In the latest cases, we’re seeing an increase in phishing and credential harvesting email attempts linked to Amazon Prime Day.
“Cyber criminals will use any tactic to trick people into handing over sensitive information, and this often means taking advantage of trusting relationships – whether it’s imitating a boss, or a well-known brand.
“Organisations have a vital role to play in increasing training and awareness for staff to spot suspicious and ‘out of the ordinary’ requests, whether that’s on email, phone or via social platforms. Additionally, on an enterprise level, we must fight bad actors with innovative technology such as identity security, to protect the workforce and reduce the risk of cyber-attacks and data breaches, by spotting irregular behaviour from users.”
1. We may be talking about 21st century technology, but this advice is centuries old: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. It’s very important to do some cross-checking of “screamin’ deals” to see if there is corroborating evidence that the deal is genuine. A good way to do this is to independently browse to Amazon (or whatever retailer is offering the deal) and see if you see references to the same deal on the site. Consider the source of the deal—was it an ad on social media, an email, or a text message? That last category should set off alarm bells and flashing red lights—unless you specifically opted into text messages about promotions and deals. If you can’t recall whether you opted in, there’s a good chance that you didn’t. Scams abound!
2. Vetting the source of the proposed deal can help save you from logging into a fake site, where not receiving the goods you’re trying to buy may be the least of your problems. Scam retail sites are a major vector for identity theft, which can be a nightmare to go through. I’ll reiterate: check the site!
Look carefully for misspellings in the domain name in the URL or in the text of whatever message is offering the deal.
Likewise, independently log into the site, from a fresh browser tab–NOT by pasting the link from the original source but by typing the retailer’s basic domain (e.g. amazon.com) into the browser address bar and then seeking out the deal from there
If you have the retailer in your bookmarks, that’s also a good option—anything other than clicking a link in an ad or email or text that comes from a source you can’t 100% confirm as valid.
“Fraudsters have never been so ruthless with their tactics, and they’re increasingly using ones that are far more personal and harder to spot. In the latest cases, we’re seeing an increase in phishing and credential harvesting email attempts linked to Amazon Prime Day.
“Cyber criminals will use any tactic to trick people into handing over sensitive information, and this often means taking advantage of trusting relationships – whether it’s imitating a boss, or a well-known brand.
“Organisations have a vital role to play in increasing training and awareness for staff to spot suspicious and ‘out of the ordinary’ requests, whether that’s on email, phone or via social platforms. Additionally, on an enterprise level, we must fight bad actors with innovative technology such as identity security, to protect the workforce and reduce the risk of cyber-attacks and data breaches, by spotting irregular behaviour from users.”
1. We may be talking about 21st century technology, but this advice is centuries old: if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is too good to be true. It’s very important to do some cross-checking of “screamin’ deals” to see if there is corroborating evidence that the deal is genuine. A good way to do this is to independently browse to Amazon (or whatever retailer is offering the deal) and see if you see references to the same deal on the site. Consider the source of the deal—was it an ad on social media, an email, or a text message? That last category should set off alarm bells and flashing red lights—unless you specifically opted into text messages about promotions and deals. If you can’t recall whether you opted in, there’s a good chance that you didn’t. Scams abound!
2. Vetting the source of the proposed deal can help save you from logging into a fake site, where not receiving the goods you’re trying to buy may be the least of your problems. Scam retail sites are a major vector for identity theft, which can be a nightmare to go through. I’ll reiterate: check the site!