Phishing Emails Pose As Health And Tax Info | Avast
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An online scam is a deception carried out over the internet with the aim of tricking individuals into giving away personal, financial, or other sensitive information, or directly stealing their money.
Online scams can take many forms, from phishing messages and fake online marketplaces to elaborate fraudulent dating profiles and too-good-to-be-true investment deals. What online scams usually have in common is their use of social engineering tactics to deceive, manipulate, and exploit victims.
Phishing attacks are commonly perpetrated via email. But watch out for different types of text message scams like USPS scams that are phishing ploys, too. Spam phone calls may also employ phishing techniques. Some generic phishing attacks are broad-sweeping, sent out to thousands of victims, while others are precisely targeted at specific individuals (known as spear phishing).
Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, GoFundMe, and Indiegogo allow people to solicit donations from anyone on the internet who finds their cause worthy. People use crowdfunding to raise money for a variety of purposes, from bringing creative projects, business ventures, and innovative ideas to life, to the more somber needs of covering medical or legal expenses.
Scammers can abuse crowdsourcing platforms by whipping up fake campaigns designed to excite or tug at the heartstrings of potential donors. Once scammers collect a significant sum in donations, they abruptly cut off all communication and disappear, leaving backers with unfulfilled promises and no way to reclaim their contributions.
In a rental scam, fake rental properties are advertised at attractive prices, usually below market rate. Once a potential victim shows interest, the scammer creates a sense of urgency by, say, claiming that the property is in high demand and that an immediate deposit is required to secure it.
A particularly pernicious type of real estate scam, timeshare scams happen when fraudsters trick people who own or are interested in buying timeshares. As a recent story about a Mexican drug cartel timeshare scam showed, these scams involve deceptive promises to sell property at inflated prices, transfer ownership easily, carry out services that are never provided, and other ploys. And the financial impact can be devastating, including entire bank and savings accounts emptied.
The scam side becomes apparent when the focus shifts from selling products to recruiting more members. In MLM scams, new recruits are encouraged to buy large amounts of inventory, often spending more than they ever recover in sales. The company then benefits from the sales, while the individual salespeople are left with huge amounts of inventory and no profits.
As MLMs have evolved, social media like Facebook and Instagram, have become a key tool for recruitment, with many people drawn into MLMs by trusted friends or family members. There have also been several high-profile cryptocurrency MLM scams, including OneCoin, a scheme that took in more than $4 billion from at least 3.5 million victims.
Whenever and wherever money is exchanged for goods and services, the environment is vulnerable to scams, especially when these transactions take place online. Even trusted platforms like PayPal and Amazon are not immune to scams. In fact, in 2022, Amazon spent $1.2 billion in efforts to crack down on fake products appearing on their platform.
The festive season often sees a spike in fraud, as scammers exploit the holiday frenzy and surge in online transactions. Among these, non-payment scams pose a threat to smaller retailers, who find themselves dispatching goods or services only to be left uncompensated.
A notorious example of a travel scam is the Fyre Festival, which was promoted as a luxury music festival on a private island in The Bahamas, featuring top-tier musical acts, gourmet food, and lavish accommodations. However, attendees were met with inadequate infrastructure, lack of proper food and accommodation, and the absence of the advertised entertainment, revealing the event as a massively failed and fraudulent operation.
Classic hallmarks of these schemes are high-pressure tactics used to recruit new members, coupled with vague or convoluted explanations of the actual investment strategy. A recent variation of get-rich-quick schemes features self-proclaimed business gurus promoting the use of AI tools like ChatGPT as surefire ways to build million-dollar enterprises. However, the reality seldom matches the hype.
What am I being asked to share?
Phishing scams go after personal details that can later be used against you. No legitimate company should be asking you to confirm your login credentials, financial accounts, credit card numbers, or detailed personal information.
Report the scam: Scamming is a criminal act. Report the internet scam to the relevant authorities in your area and inform them about the scam. Your reports can go a long way toward helping others avoid falling for the same scam.
Share your experience: You may feel embarrassed for having fallen for a scam, but talking about your experience can help you process your feelings, especially after a romance scam. You can also help educate your friends and family on how to protect themselves from future scams.
Install online security software: The best antivirus apps can help block malicious, scammy websites. It can even help you keep malware-laced downloads and attachments from infecting your device.
Avast One helps protect you against malware that scammers use to infect your devices by continually monitoring your device for vulnerabilities and blocking malicious downloads that scammers aim against you. Help protect your device with a trusted online security solution used by millions of users worldwide.
Avast Free Antivirus protects you against malware that scammers use to infect your devices by continually monitoring your device for vulnerabilities and blocking malicious downloads that scammers aim against you. Help protect your device with a trusted online security solution used by millions of users worldwide.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., March 23, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- Avast (LSE:AVST), a global leader in digital security and privacy, and the National Council on Aging (NCOA) partnered to share the story of tech support scam victim, Phyllis Weisberg, raise awareness on the threat tech support scams pose for older adults and help them protect their online security and privacy.
Ninety year old widow, Phyllis Weisberg, never thought she'd be a victim of a tech support scam. Phyllis thought she was receiving help, but instead was defrauded of $20,000 when cybercriminals withdrew the money from her bank account. As it is common in these types of scams, Phyllis has not been able to recover her money, so she is now trying to help warn others.
Tech support scams are fraudulent activities that prey on unwitting victims by using scare and high-pressure tactics. Through phone calls, pop-ups, texts, or emails, a scammer pretends to offer technical support services and tries to fool victims into paying for fake services or providing remote access to their computer. Scammers often pose as representatives from a recognised organization (financial institutions, utility companies, technology providers, or virtual currency exchanges), offering to resolve issues related to a compromised email or bank account, a virus on a computer, or even a software license renewal.
"They warned me not to discuss the issue on the telephone with anyone, because these bad guys could hear all my conversations. They sent me an address and asked me to send a wire with money. I went to the branch closer to home. A very young fellow asked me the questions the scammers told me he would ask and I responded in the way they asked me to. I had all the answers programmed for me," Phyllis said. "My first reaction was total embarrassment that I would do anything that stupid. It took me quite a while to realize I wasn't the only one who was being taken advantage of. All I can do now is warn others and just hope that this will at least help one other person avoid going through this," she continued.
"Tech support fraud is increasingly common and targets some of the most vulnerable individuals. Scams are about psychological manipulation and a key piece of this is getting people into an isolated reality which gives the attacker greater opportunities of control. We are talking about professional scammers. They go in day after day and do nothing but tech support scams,'' said Emma McGowan, Privacy and Security Expert at Avast.
"Above all, people should remember that whether it's a phone call or a website, legitimate tech support won't ever proactively seek them out to fix an issue. If in doubt, don't engage, give access to your devices, or share any personal information. Don't be embarrassed and don't hesitate to be vocal. Protect yourself and learn how to report financial fraud if you suspect you're a victim," explained McGowan.
Avast has partnered with the National Council on Aging (NCOA) to help empower older adults on how to make the most of the Internet safely and protect their personal cyber security. Together they developed educational content to make privacy and security easy and simple for people of all ages, including articles, guides, webinars and videos on topics such as phishing scams, strong passwords, sweetheart scams, digital health and tech support scams.
"Last year, Avast carried out a comprehensive study with YouGov which found out that 82% of people aged over 65 in the US have received a phone call from someone who was trying to scam them and 37% are quite or very afraid of getting scammed online. 78% have held back from doing something online, because of concerns about their online security and/or privacy, and 28% do not feel like they understand how to protect themselves from online threats. It is imperative that we provide knowledge and tools for older adults to feel safe and confident online," added Emma McGowan.
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