Online scams can happen anywhere, at anytime, and to anyone, even the most technologically savvy internet user.
Recently the Better Business Bureau conducted a study which sought to examine the 10 biggest consumer scams in 2011. Their rankings are based on the volume of complaints, the economic climate and major events exploited by scammers.
The study makes the point that scams can happen anywhere quite emphatically, as the number one scam of the year was actually involving the Better Business Bureau themselves! Scammers posing as representatives of the BBB, sent emails to small business owners informing them of a negative complaint against their company. When they opened the link, malware was downloaded to seek out bank information. Any info found resulted in money being withdrawn or transferred from the associated account.
All of the ten entries were interesting cases, each representing a clever and varied attempt by a thief to fool you into giving up valuable personal information they can use. The good news, is that these scams require you to actively do something to allow thieves access. The bad news, is that as previously mentioned the types of scams are becoming more diverse and harder to spot as the public is slowly becoming aware of the existence of these types of scam attempts.
http://liarcatchers.com/identity_theft_investigation.html
One of the more interesting parts of the piece was what they called their “top identity theft scam,” which detailed how a scammer will call hotel guests in the middle of the night in hopes that they get a sleepy hotel patron to pick up the phone. Once the scammer gets them on the line they pretend to be the front desk and say there’s a problem with the guest’s credit card. When the sleepy guest (without thinking through why the hotel would need a credit card number to establish that the card they already had on file was not working) gives out his number, the scammer hangs up and goes shopping on the hotel patron’s dime.
The irony of course in calling this “the top identity theft scam of 2011,” is of course that this scam doesn’t involve true identity theft (which involves stealing a person’s personal identifying information such as a social security number, date of birth, or bank account numbers) but is in fact a simple credit card fraud. The ITRC considers these two separate events mainly because while credit card fraud can usually be fixed with a single phone call to your bank or card-service carrier, true identity theft can be much more costly, time consuming, and difficult to resolve.
Still, overall the study does a great job of outlining how creative scammers have become, and how a smart consumer of online information should be a skeptical one.
Remember to NEVER give out your information to any person, business or other entity that you don’t totally trust.
