Scam of the Week: Watch Out for Election-Themed Scams
In this week's scam, cybercriminals are taking advantage of the upcoming United States elections to try and steal your personal information and money. The scams vary slightly and involve fake text messages, social media posts, phone calls, and more.
Scam of the Week: The Fake Funeral Livestream
Unfortunately, cybercriminals will go to great lengths to try to trick you and steal your information. In this week’s scam, cybercriminals are stealing photos and personal details of recently deceased people from social media.
Scam of the Week: Pastejack Attack
In this week’s scam, cybercriminals are trying to trick you into running malicious code using PowerShell, a powerful tool for executing commands on your computer. This technique is known as “pastejacking”, which involves copying and pasting malicious code into your computer and then allowing it to run.
Scam of the Week: CrowdStrike Outage Phishing Scams
Recently, a mass IT outage caused confusion and chaos. A buggy software update deployed by the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike impacted Windows computers worldwide. Systems were affected globally, resulting in delayed flights, business closures, and more.
Scam of the Week: Don’t Medal With Olympic Scams
With the Paris Olympics beginning this week, be on the lookout for phishing emails and text messages pointing you to fake Olympics-branded websites or offering discounted merchandise or tickets. Cybercriminals will take advantage of all the excitement around the Olympics to try to steal your personal information or money.
Scam of the Week: These Prime Deals Are Too Good to Be Real
Amazon Prime Day is this week, and there are plenty of deals for you to take advantage of. However, cybercriminals are also looking to turn these deals to their advantage. In this particular scam, cybercriminals have created fake websites that look very similar to the real Amazon website.
Scam of the Week: Be on Patrol for These Fake Calls
In this week’s scam, cybercriminals are impersonating U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents. The scammers call you and claim that CBP has intercepted drugs or money shipments that are addressed to you.
Scam of the Week: Malware Office Suite
“You get what you pay for,” and this week’s scam is no exception. Cybercriminals are distributing a “free” pirated version of Microsoft Office across torrenting websites. The catch is that it’s actually malware. If you download and install it, the malware can begin harvesting your personal data.
Scam of the Week: These Banking Emails Are Counterfeit
In this week’s scam, cybercriminals are sending out phishing emails that claim to be from many different banking organizations. By impersonating different banks, the cybercriminals hope to trick even more people into clicking on malicious links.
Scam of the Week: Government Phishing
Cybercriminals like to manipulate people into acting on impulse because anyone can fall for this trick, even government officials. In this week’s scam, a Russian hacking group is targeting members of the Polish government with an enticing phishing email.
Scam of the Week: Cheaters Never Win
Cybercriminals often find creative ways to spread malware, and this recent scam is no exception. They are posting malicious links in the comment sections of video gaming websites and forums. If you click on one of the links, it will download a .zip file for a program called Cheat Lab.
Scam of the Week: Tollway Turmoil
Scams that occur over text messaging are called smishing scams. This week, cybercriminals are using smishing to target motorists. They send a fake text message claiming that you have a toll due for driving on the Pennsylvania Turnpike.
Scam of the Week: Unsecured Security App
In this week’s scam, cybercriminals are spreading malware by using a fake security app. They send you a text message that says a large financial transaction has just occurred using your bank account. It instructs you to call a phone number if you have not authorized the transaction. Of course, the transaction never occurred, and the cybercriminals are trying to scare you into acting impulsively.
Scam of the Week: Fake Financial File Phishing
In a recent phishing email scam, cybercriminals use vague financial terms that attempt to make you curious enough to click the attachment in the email. The subject of the email is “Remittance Summary,” and the malicious attachment is named “Payment Advice.” The body of the email only says, “Find attached payment advice for remittance.. Kindly revert.” The sender of the email appears to be legitimate, but it is actually sent from a fake sender address. If you download the PDF file, the malware will begin installing on your computer.
Scam of the Week: Leave a Message After the Phish
It’s no secret that cybercriminals are using AI technology to craft phishing emails, but did you know AI can also help them with voice phishing (vishing)? It’s surprisingly easy to teach AI software to sound like a specific person. All they need to recreate your voice is a short audio clip, like one from a recorded phone call or a video posted to social media. Once the cybercriminals have your voice, they can easily target friends, family members, and coworkers with AI-powered vishing.
Scam of the Week: Tax Attacks
Millions of people around the world are paying their taxes this time of year, and cybercriminals are hoping to get paid, too. In this week’s scam, they’re taking advantage of tax season by trying to trick you into opening an email and downloading a malicious PDF attachment. The email they send looks like a government form and includes a link to download the PDF attachment. The scammers even include helpful instructions for pasting the web page URL into your browser in case the link isn’t working.
Scam of the Week: Phony Utility Ads
Search engines, like Google, are so popular that many people use the search feature instead of typing a URL. For instance, people may quickly search for their electricity provider's name to find the online payment portal. And for this week's scam, that's exactly what cybercriminals want you to do. This scam tries to trick you into clicking on a fake ad instead of the billing portal that you’re trying to find. The scammers purchase a variety of fake utility payment advertisements, and you see those ads during your searches. They know that they can trick you more easily if you contact them instead of them reaching out to you.
Scam of the Week: Deepfake Deception
AI scams are becoming more frequent, and they’re also becoming more sophisticated. In a recent scam, cybercriminals demonstrated just how convincing AI fraud can be by faking an entire video call. In fact, the scammers were able to steal over 200 million Hong Kong dollars by emailing an employee and pretending to be their organization’s Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
Scam of the Week: These Crypto Ads are a Real Drain
Have you seen online ads stating you can make tons of money with cryptocurrency? Be careful –many of these ads are scams. Social engineers want to make you think you can get rich quickly. But they are trying to trick you into providing personal information.
Scam of the Week: Ransoming Businesses Is a Successful Business
On Christmas Eve, cybercriminals targeted three hospitals in Germany using Lockbit 3.0 ransomware. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that infects computers and networks. It holds data and other sensitive information “hostage” in exchange for payment. If you refuse to meet their payment demands, the cybercriminals could destroy the files. Or they could make them available to the public, resulting in data theft and leaks of sensitive information.