Two New Cyber Scams for the Price of One – Beware!
Image source: Philipp Katzenberger, Unsplash
Good day!
No doubt you read about online phishing scams every day.
Hopefully not, but you’ve probably faced more than your fair share of cyber scam attempts over time. Cyber fraud and online fraud are all over the place. It’s terrible!
What’s more, Cyber criminals are very smart and tricky.
Unfortunately, many people fall prey to these crimes. Please beware and be vigilant. Never let your guard down.
So, this week we want to share these two stories about online fraud that Actually Happened to Me in the last few weeks. So you can try to outsmart the criminals and reduce the risk of getting into trouble and losing money and time.
Read on to learn about these two recent phishing scam attempts on yours truly.
Look twice before you click! Be on guard!
These two recent cyber scams – hacking attempts – on me – seemed too good to be true.
Thankfully, I realized it and passed.
In many ways, the old adage my grandfather used to say, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” still rings true.
The only thing I wasted was my time. But on the other hand, I learned a valuable lesson that reminded me to be on guard, remain skeptical and proceed slowly.
This post is part of a three-part series on cyber scams and cyber security.
You can grab the other two posts in this series: 7 Common Cyber Scams to Make Your Day and 7 Steps to Stay Safe Online.
Read on and be sure to protect yourself online!
Arthur V.
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Cyber Scam #1 – Big Bank Emails Me to Hire Our Company
The amazing thing about this scam is that the perpetrators were so detail-oriented and persistent – they kept emailing and ultimately called us. Scary!
This crazy story actually happened to me!
One of my clients is a consulting firm. I advise them on sales and selling.
A few weeks ago, someone (let’s call him Charlie) posing as an employee from a Top Four U.S. Bank’s Procurement Group [think Citibank, Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, etc. . .] sent us an email, “We found you online and identified you as an ideal vendor to provide these [particular] services. We have enclosed a confidentiality agreement. To receive information about the first project, you cannot make any comments on the agreement and you must return the signed agreement on or before June 26.”
For reference, many people refer to a confidentiality agreement as a ‘nondisclosure agreement’ or ‘NDA’.
Banks were one of my client’s target markets. Doing work for one of America’s Top 4 Banks would have been a huge win for us. So, the ‘opportunity’ seemed like a dream come true.
After downloading the confidentiality agreement, I emailed it to my client’s general counsel (lawyer) for review. He signed off on the document without making any comments. Thankfully, the Word document didn’t contain any links that could have been harmful (or my colleague didn’t click on them).
From the beginning, the whole event bothered me, raised the hairs on the back of my neck.
Why would a Top 4 Bank reach out to us?
In all my more than 20 years of business experience (absent having a direct contact), especially a major company, would never reach out like this. The company would post ‘request for proposal’ information on their vendor, project or procurement section of their website. Interested vendors would review the website, select the projects that interest them, apply to qualify as a vendor and then submit a proposal.
Never the reverse!
My colleague signed the confidentiality agreement, but I hesitated to return it to the bank. And by the way, confidentiality agreements are standard market practice.
I decided to call my friend Lisa who’s a banker at that Top 4 Bank.
Needless to say, Lisa checked the bank’s employee databases and said the guy was NOWHERE to be found. . .
Trouble avoided! Whew!
But the story continues. . .
June 26 came and went. I slept like a baby. After the July 4th holiday weekend, Charlie who sent me the email, emailed me, asking us to return the NDA. I responded, saying we were meeting to discuss it.
A day or two later, Charlie called me. I told him we couldn’t find him in the Bank’s global employee directory.
Then, his colleague [George] emailed us, copying Charlie; saying “Charlie was his new colleague at the Bank so he wasn’t in the directory yet. But they were working on the project together and we should please help him. . .”
That was Bogus because companies – especially major companies – have a detailed on-boarding and off-boarding process – a checklist of items to be handled. One of them includes giving the new employee an email address and adding their work contact details to the company’s employee register.
There could be No Way that Charlie wouldn’t be in the company directory.
And by the way, once or twice when I replied to their emails, I received a bounce-back email, from the Bank saying that my email was rejected [by their firewall].
My emails to my friend Lisa at the same Bank sailed right through, no problem.
Again, this crazy story happened to me!
Thankfully, I was alert and on guard.
Please beware; stay alert; and on guard!
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Cyber Scam #2 – Facebook Hack Scam
Recently, my mom’s close friend Mary – mom had nicknamed her ‘Cookie’ – reached out to me on Facebook.
Cookie asked me if I had applied for the ‘New York Community Block Grant Program’.
She said she received $200,000 in free money. And she thought it was a good idea for me to do this.
For a nanosecond, I thought that perhaps finally my gold rush had come in.
$200,000 is a lot of money, especially if it’s for free.
From word one, Cookie’s suggestion made no sense to me. Immediately, my guard went up.
Interestingly enough though, Cookie was always trying to play some angle to grab some extra money. Over the years, she got involved in all sorts of multi-level marketing programs and a few other seemingly ‘get rich quick’ endeavors.
While $200,000 seemed like a tall order, especially for Cookie, the idea of her pursuing something like this was Not out of the question. Perhaps a prize of say $10,000 or $15,000 would have seemed more plausible. Anyway. . .
I wrote back to Mary, asking why she wrote to me, only now, approximately eight years after my mother had died. She answered, “It’s a good program and I received the free money. You should apply.”
Commonsense told me to pass and delete Cookie as a friend on Facebook. Goodbye.
Like my grandfather used to say, “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.”
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With all the cyber and phishing scams coming to our email inboxes every week; our hectic schedules; and harried lives our quest for success, it’s Easy to make a mistake.
Proceed slowly, before you click! Don’t let that be you.
Be on guard 24/7. Stay safe!
While we’re on the topic, You can grab the other two posts: 7 Common Cyber Scams to Make Your Day and 7 Steps to Stay Safe Online.
See you next week.
Arthur V.
To Succeed even bigger, greater and stronger, 10X your success. Click here.
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