Happy Tuesday everyone! I want to touch on an important subject today regarding a recent scam that has been gaining more traction and unfortunately, more people have been falling subject to it. You do not want to ruin your fresh start in 2021 with a preventable cybersecurity scam!
This scam that is on the rise involves cybercriminals impersonating employees, government workers, or other credible sources, claiming to need a favor and will ask you to buy gift cards for them.
I want to make it clear that no one is going to put money in your bank account in order for you to buy gift cards for them. No one is going to reach out to you and ask for a favor and take money out of your account promising to put it back later. These criminals have crafted emails and phone calls that the smartest people can fall for and be duped into taking actions that under normal circumstances do not make sense. If you get emails like this, ignore them, and do not act no matter how many times they contact you. It is a recipe for disaster.
The scariest part of this scam is that these criminals make it seem so real and authentic that people can be easily taken advantage of and fall for something like this. I promise you that Microsoft is not going to call you, Interpol will not contact you, and there are no secret operations where you need to buy gift cards for someone. Remember that if this was something legitimate from Microsoft, you can call them from a known number taken off a trusted website in order to verify.
This type of scam is under the category of social engineering and it is imperative you do not fall for it because there are typically no resources for you to get your money back if you withdraw money and buy gift cards with it. However, if you do run into a problem with either yourself or someone at your company do not hesitate to reach out to us so we can help you with an immediate incident response plan to get you back up and running.