Capital one sent me a message about scams they are seeing in the wild. I thought it was interesting to review. Here are the four scams they advised me about.
Employment scams: Scammers pose as a potential employer for an exclusively online or remote job. They will ask you to purchase computers and office equipment with the promise of reimbursement or claim to have overpaid you for your work. Reimbursements and overpayments will be reversed, leaving you responsible for the funds.
I’ve seen different versions of this scam pop up. Dark reading posted about a version focused on HR approving travel (read about that found HERE). The lesson to take away is you just can’t trust messages for what they say. You need to validate the source and use other ways to double check the authenticity of any message.
Yes, most employers won’t physically know their HR people. I never met people who approved my work at large companies I worked for (Cisco, Microsoft, Northrup Grumman, etc.) however, there were ways to validate messages came from those teams. First and foremost, I wouldn’t just click a built in link. There were times I emailed back asking for an explanation on how I can navigate to the form they wanted me to fill out from within the intranet claiming I don’t trust hyper links in emails. Nobody is going to give you a hard time for thinking about security.
Payment scams: Scammers often provide customers with illegitimate bank information, offering to pay off your credit card balance—and possibly asking for gift cards or cash in return. But the payment is frequently reversed, leaving you responsible for the entire credit card balance.
Simple lesson … validate any banking info and never click hyperlinks to access sensitive information.
Impersonating Capital One: Scammers will try to pose as Capital One and ask you to provide your personal information or even transfer money by phone, text or email. In this process, the scammer is attempting to gain access to your account.
Same lesson as before.
Social media marketplace scams: Scammers are placing ads on social media marketplaces for selling goods and services. Often, these deals require the customers to pay in advance. Once you pay the scammers, you won’t be able to get in touch with them again.
This lesson is similar but has a few extra things to think about. I’ve posted about payment and marketplace scams in the past. Here is an example of one of the many. Typically, they offer to overpay and ask for a refund of the difference. They pay with fake checks or other ways that will bounce within a few days. They pressure you to pay the difference before that happens. Here is another example of a fake check post I did.
Its good practice to think about this stuff and continue to challenge yourself as phishing will be and continues to be a HUGE threat.