News

The IC3.gov annual report shows the top fraud categories in 2022. Crypto Investment Scams and Call Center Scams are surging! Let’s take a deeper look at the underlying trends and causes.

Maria Harika Ransomware is a continually evolving type of malware that implements encryption to hold a victim’s data at ransom. When a system is hacked and infected, ransomware has the ability to lock and encrypt data, restricting victim access, and hold the data for a monetary ransom in exchange for decryption. Costs of these ransoms can…
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Robin J. Pugh Have you ever received an email with a too-good-to-be-true vacation offer?  You’re right to be skeptical, but holiday or travel-related fraud is a much bigger category than just those “bargain travel” offers.  Americans reported almost 54,000 incidents of travel-related fraud to the FTC in 2021, costing over $95 million.   You’ve won an…
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Joseph Margolies With the holidays quickly approaching, the season of giving for some reigns as the season of taking for many others. One avenue used to trick victims out of their money involves scammers fronting as representatives for charitable organizations. These charity scams operate by contacting victims and asking for donations to fund their efforts…
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Rushikesh Bhalekar Take a look at the image below. Can you differentiate between one Microsoft account login page and the other? Pretty tough, right? The main difference is that the first one will take you to your emails, and the second will steal your password and email. This is just one example, but to this…
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Robin Pugh Loneliness can hit hard around the holiday season.  Everywhere you look, happy couples and families are enjoying the festivities of the season together, which makes the holiday season an ideal time for romance scammers to target victims.   Romance fraud occurs when a criminal targets a victim and builds a trust relationship, often based…
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Gary Warner Online investment scams have been with us for decades in the form of “too good to be true” investment promises that were often called “HYIP” or High-Yield Investment Programs.  While the scammers promise impossible returns on investment, the scams often involve a Ponzi-scheme component, where small investments are paid in hopes of attracting…
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Alyssa Brame Elder fraud, also known as elder abuse, is a crime that is on the rise, with 2021 losses increasing by 74% over 2021 to $1.7 Billion, according to the IC3 Elder Fraud report. The impact of elder fraud can be devastating to a victim. Oftentimes, the scammer uses a ploy that involves urgency…
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Maria Harika Who doesn’t love a good sporting or concert event? You go online to purchase tickets, but things do not go as planned and rather than watching your favorite team score some goals, a cybercriminal scores them instead. Now, consumers can buy an event ticket via phone through social media, event websites, second hand…
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Liv Lake When things go awry with your home PC or printer, people often turn to support hotlines, online forms, and various other modes of communication to share their issues with tech support companies in hopes of getting them resolved quickly. According to data from Zippia – The Career Expert, there are over 245,335 technical…
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