I recently read an article about a bright, sophisticated woman who fell victim to an unbelievable scam. By unbelievable, I mean most people reading or hearing about it could not believe it was successful. A group posing as an Amazon employee and various U.S. law enforcement agencies were able to convince a woman to take $50,000 out of her bank account in cash and hand it off to a complete stranger in the streets. It is a wild story and most of us would not be tricked into doing what happened to her.

What happened with a fake call purporting to be from Amazon tricked a financial advice columnist into handing over $50,000 to a stranger.

A widespread malvertising campaign is attempting to trick users into paying phony utility bills, according to researchers at Malwarebytes. “We discovered a prolific campaign of fraudulent ads shown to users via Google searches,” the researchers write. “To give an idea of scale, the number of ads we found exceeds what we have found in previous malvertising cases....The scam begins when a user searches for keywords related to their energy bill.

The first step in combating retail fraud is learning which forms it takes. That’s easy enough, because there are two main types of retail and eCommerce fraud today: The second step in stopping retail fraud from harming your business is to understand how each type of fraud works, then implement a strategy to protect against it.

When encountering a scammer online, the best method is to block, report, and move on. Let the law take charge of handing out consequences to scammers, and you can focus on stopping scammers in their tracks. Sometimes, this can be more challenging as online scammers become more adept at tricking people into believing their lies, using technology, social engineering, and emotional manipulation to achieve their aims.

Valentine's Day. A time where love is in the air, florists work overtime, and restaurant tables are as scarce as a truthful politician. But as we're busy swiping right in hopes of finding that special someone, cybercriminals are swiping left...on your security. Heartbreak hits differently when it's your bank account that's been ghosted.

As the digital attack surface expands, organizations and individuals worldwide face the nonstop threat of cyberattacks, phishing scams, and other cyber vulnerabilities. And with Valentine’s Day here, romance scams — especially ones originating online — are intensifying. With that in mind, SecurityScorecard’s researchers took a close look at the world of dating app security and romance scams to protect people—and their hearts—during Valentine’s Day.

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has disclosed that people in the United States lost a record $10 billion to fraud in 2023, a 14% increase from 2022. Nearly half of the losses were due to investment scams. “Consumers reported losing more money to investment scams—more than $4.6 billion—than any other category in 2023. That amount represents a 21% increase over 2022,” the FTC says.

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it comes as no surprise that Egress’ Threat Intelligence team is starting to see an uptick in romance-based phishing attacks. In particular, they noted a staggering 43% increase in attacks impersonating well-established dating apps including Tinder and Hinge between January 1, 2024, until February 5, 2024, compared to 2023. This is only likely to increase as the day draws closer.

A few ways you can identify if a text message is fake is if its context is irrelevant to you; it’s claiming to be someone you know from an unknown number; it displays a sense of urgency; it’s asking you to click on a link; and it contains spelling, grammatical errors or both. In recent years, there has been an abundance of fake text messages targeting individuals to steal their personal information – placing victims at risk of having their identity stolen and losing money.