After 89 years, the Washington Redskins are losing their team name. But, that’s not the only thing that got lost this week. So, too, did people’s money who tried to purchase the suddenly-hard-to-find merchandise.
According to Scamicide, “the termination of the old name and the refusal of major retailers such as Amazon, Walmart and Target to sell Redskins jerseys, caps and other merchandise carrying the old name and logo has created a demand by many people seeking to purchase the soon to be rare merchandise with the old name and logo. While there are legitimate sellers of these items, scammers have also sprung into action and have set up websites offering the merchandise at bargain prices. Of course, these bargain prices are no bargain because after you order the merchandise online, the merchandise never comes.” Maybe you should wait to buy a new jersey.
It’s 2020, which means it’s time for another Presidential election in the U.S. The big question is, who will win? But an even bigger question is, will we be able to trust the outcome? There are evil forces out there who’d love nothing better than to manipulate the outcome of the election for their own purposes. And what way are they most likely to do that? Through phishing, of course.
SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is a primary communication protocol to transfer emails between servers. An SMTP mail server uses a relay service to communicate with another SMTP server. Mostly, SMTP email servers are ideal for outgoing email updates, newsletters, and website notifications. SMTP relay service is a means to make these frequent email communications much more efficient with a web application, WordPress website, and a custom domain address. Email communication efficiency significantly impacts an organization’s day-to-day functions.
Amazon Prime users beware. There’s a scam out there and it’s direct right at you. According to Tech Radar, “The scammers target victims via an automated telephone call claiming that they have opened an Amazon Prime account and that they should ‘press one’ to cancel the transaction. However, doing so will connect the call to a fraudster posing as an Amazon customer service representative.
If you take an email security awareness training class, you’ll learn a dozen ways to spot phishing email. There are a lot of clues. Maybe the email contains poor spelling or grammar. Or maybe it contains an offer that’s just too good to be true. All of those are giveaways. But there is one clue that’s a more reliable predictor of a phishing email than any other one: the “from” address. If you truly know who the email is from, you’ll know whether or not it’s legitimate.
It’s always good when you can get a heads up on scams coming at you. This one courtesy of TechRepublic. According to an article there, here are the phishing email subject lines you need to be on the lookout for:
Password Check Required Immediately
Vacation Policy Update
Branch/Corporate Reopening Schedule
COVID-19 Awareness
Coronavirus Stimulus Checks
List of Rescheduled Meetings Due to COVID-19
Confidential Information on COVID-19
COVID-19 – Now airborne, Increased community transmission
There are a lot of companies that depend on their employees to stop phishing attacks. In effect, their employees are their last line of defense. Seeing as how the cost of phishing attacks is now in the tens of billions of dollars per year (nobody knows the exact amount since victims are so reluctant to come forward), it seems like the employees stopping phishing attacks thing isn’t working too well. And now we know why.
Your computer and smartphone aren’t the only ways you can get scammed. You can also get scammed at the gas pump. This week the FTC issued a warning about credit card skimmers at gas pumps.
“Recently, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) issued a warning about the dangers presented by skimmers on gas pumps. Skimmers are small electronic devices that are easily installed by an identity thief on gas pumps, ATMs and other card reading devices. The skimmer steals all of the information from old style magnetic strip credit card or debit cards which then enables the identity thief to use that information to access the victim’s bank account when the skimmer is used on a debit card. If a credit card is used, the identity thief can use the stolen information to access the victim’s credit card account. Each skimmer can hold information on as many as 2,400 cards.” Pay attention at the pump.
Most phishing attacks are pretty straight forward. You receive an email that convinces you to log into some website you’re familiar with. But, it’s just a convincing looking replica of the website and what you’re really doing is entering your credentials into a bogus site. Once you do that, the bad guys have your credentials, and depending on which ones, they can create a whole lot of havoc for you.
If someone offers you free DNSSEC, just know, it’s a scam. This according to Bleeping Computer. “A very clever phishing campaign targets bloggers and website owners with emails pretending to be from their hosting provider who wants to upgrade their domain to use secure DNS (DNSSEC).”
“As it’s possible to determine who is hosting a domain for a website via the WHOIS records, IP addresses, and HTTP headers, the email scam is highly targeted and impersonates the specific hosting company used by a website.” If it seems too good to be true… (more…)
