Saturday, November 19, 2016

Beware fake phone calls from "customer service"

It cannot be said enough: hang up on callers whom you do not know, especially if they are trying to elicit any information from you. Better yet, if you don't recognize the phone number of the caller, don't pick up. Scam artists are less likely to try again if you're not answering.

Protect yourself and your employer by taking advantage of Caller ID service on your phone. Personally, if a call comes in to my cell phone from an unknown number, I let it go to voice mail.

It seems there is a new phone scam every day. Reported by Trustwave this week is a ruse that targets hotel and restaurant chains. This scam is perpetrated by a known cyber criminal gang that employs very convincing social engineering techniques like name-dropping and familiarity with other "insider" knowledge about your org chart.

When the caller reaches the hotel or restaurant's customer service line by phone, he/she claims to be a client who cannot log in to the reservations system. The caller may claim to know your boss or C-level executive.

Remember that this type of information about your company is available on the web to anyone. It takes little effort to mine LinkedIn profiles and gather intelligence about your organization's personnel structure.

An email is sent to the customer service rep with a malicious Microsoft Word document attached. When clicked, malware is executed behind the scenes that provides access to the company's credit card database and other sensitive information.

Click here for the story: This malware attack starts with a fake customer service call. When in doubt, just hang up!

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