Stay Safe This Season: 15 Holiday Scams to Avoid

The holiday season is a time for celebration, generosity, and connecting with loved ones. Unfortunately, it’s also a time when scammers ramp up their efforts. With more shopping, traveling, donating, and digital activity happening this time of year, fraudsters see the holidays as the perfect opportunity to take advantage of distracted, overwhelmed, or kind-hearted people.

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Microsoft is NOT Contacting You!

There is a myriad of scams that we need to be wary of these days. A very common scam that is easy to fall for is a tech support scam.

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Ten Ways to Keep Your Money Safe Online

Life is busy. We spend our waking hours working, learning, parenting, caretaking, exercising, cooking, shopping and feeling guilty about all the things we didn’t do. The list is endless, and it all takes time, so something has to give.

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Protect Yourself from Tax Scams This Season

It’s that time of year again - tax season. Let’s not let the fraudsters cash in on our hard-earned money or steal our identity.

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How to Spot and Avoid Romance Scams

Love - it’s the universal language that makes the world go ‘round, and unfortunately, the perfect cover for scammers. In the age of swipes, likes, and video chats, finding a soulmate online is more common than ever. According to Statista, a statistics portal, "...over 17 percent of the population of the United States were using online dating services, translating to almost 60 million users."   

Cybercriminals are equal opportunity scammers - both men and women can be, and often are, duped by these sneaky tactics. 

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DON’T CLICK THE LINK! How to Prevent Falling Victim to Phone Scammers

According to Consumer Affairs, in 2023, there were over 310 million smartphone users in the US. Text message open rates are estimated to be as high as 98% compared to only a 20% open rate for emails, so it’s no wonder cyber criminals are focusing on texts! If you own a smart phone, you’ve likely been the recipient of a smishing text. Would you be able to tell?

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Stay Sharp: Tips to Avoid Being Scammed

In an act of desperation, Terry* frantically picked up the phone and called his Personal Banker at Crews Bank & Trust. Minutes before, when he logged into his online account, he saw several unauthorized transactions from an unknown source. Terry was panicked. What should he do?

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6 Cybersecurity Business Ideas to Protect Against Email Compromise

Companies of all sizes are being targeted by criminals through business email compromise scams. In these scams, cybercriminals gain access to an employee’s legitimate business email through social engineering or computer intrusion. The criminal then impersonates the employee often a senior executive or someone who can authorize payments and instructs others to transfer funds on their behalf. According to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, over $10 billion has been lost by victims in the U.S. due to these scams.

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Want to Save $1,170? Hang Up.

During the pandemic, my phone was ringing off the hook, as many fraudsters took advantage of our isolation. They knew we were lonely, stuck at home with only a few ways to communicate with others, so why not take advantage of that good ole’ telephone when everyone is afraid of hackers on the internet?

In fact, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) received about 1.25 million phone fraud complaints in 2020, and the hackers and scammers don’t seem to be showing down this year.

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Avoid Corporate Account Takeover

Cybercriminals are targeting small businesses with increasingly sophisticated attacks. “Corporate account takeover” is a form of identity theft of a business. Criminals phony emails pretending to be someone you know to trick you into clicking on links or attachments that can lead to malicious software being installed on your computer. Once this happens, they will ask you to enter credentials where they will gain access to your email account. At that point, they will send emails to the bank appearing to be from you to initiate ACH and wire transactions.

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Business Owners Need Ransomware Protection

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that locks up your files so that you no longer can access them and demands you pay a ransom to unlock the files. Paying in Bitcoin or cyber currency gives the cybercriminal anonymity and cannot be traced.

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COVID-19 Brings Out the Scammers

To paraphrase a famous expression: When the going gets tough, the scammers get going. Scammers are even identifying themselves as bank employees to steal information and cash.With COVID-19, the fraudsters are out in force, seeking to take advantage of the widespread anxiety generated by the global pandemic.

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IRS Lists Dirty Dozen Tax Scams

It’s the time of year when the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) releases its list of the latest tax scams. Scammers routinely use the anxiety of tax season to prey on the unsuspecting, and this year, they’re also using the pandemic and the government’s Economic Impact Payments to steal money and identities from taxpayers.

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“Funny Money” No Laughing Matter

iTestCash is a company dedicated to helping big and small businesses throughout the U.S. and abroad. Its CEO, Alex Reichmann, comes from a family that has spent their lives focused on the protection of people’s money. His grandfather’s company invented the counterfeit detector pen that many banks and retail businesses use to identify counterfeit bills.

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Stop Ransomware Before It Stops You!

Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts files, preventing access until a demanded sum of money is paid in exchange to unlock files. Individuals and businesses have become targets in this growing online fraud.

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