Cybersecurity month tip #4 - Recognizing and Avoiding Scams

Contacted out of the blue? Sound too good to be true? Pause and think about it. Online financial scams are the same scams that have been perpetrated for years just made easier through the use of email and social media.

Unsolicited email is the starting point for many scams. Before the advent of email, a scammer had to contact each potential victim individually by post, fax, telephone, or through direct personal contact. These methods would often require a significant investment in time and money. To improve the chances of contacting susceptible victims, the scammer might have had to do advance research on the “marks” he or she targeted.

Email has changed the game for scammers. The convenience and anonymity of email, along with the capability it provides for easily contacting thousands of people at once, enables scammers to work in volume. Scammers only need to fool a small percentage of the tens of thousands of people they email for their ruse to pay off.

Please follow our tips for recognizing these scams – feel free to forward them to family and friends, especially those with limited online experience.

Be Scam Aware