Page 24 - Seniors Today -April20
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usernames and passwords and avoid help protect yourself against coronavirus-
falling for phishing scams. Don’t hand your related scams. The overwhelming news
information out to anyone. coverage about the novel coronavirus has
created a new danger. In essence, phishing
7 Synthetic Fraud attacks as these scammers look to exploit
Synthetic fraud occurs when a perpetrator public anxiety and fears about the deadly
creates an identity instead of stealing an virus.
existing one. The scam involves taking some So how does it work? Cybercriminals
personally-identifying information (PII) like send e-mails claiming to be from legitimate
mixing real Aadhaar or PAN no. with other organisations with information about the
pieces of information like names, addresses, coronavirus. The e-mail messages might
and birthdates to put together an entirely ask you to open an attachment to see the
new identity, technically called ‘synthetic latest statistics, clinic details for treatments,
consumer’. The newly created identity is list of doctors, and so on. You click on the
often used by the Scammer to open a bank attachment or the link, and that’s what the
account, apply for a credit card, apply for fraudster was waiting for you to do. As you
loans and, of course, purchase things. download the malicious software onto your
Tip: Keep your PII information safe and device, you know the rest…
secure, shred them before discarding such Tip: Never get lured by these e-mails that
document(s) that contains your personal may ask you to open a link from a suspicious
information. party, this could be a phishing attempt by a
Scammer. So do yourself a favor and don’t
8 Phishing E-mails: respond. You can check the link by hovering
Phishing has a social engineering element your mouse button over the URL to see
that is often used for stealing user data, where it leads. Most of such e-mails will not
including login credentials and credit card be from a legitimate sender. If found, just
numbers. Usually, the scammers appear delete the e-mail!
to be a trusted entity, dupes a victim into
opening an e-mail. Soon the recipient is HOW TO AVOID SCAMS:
tricked into clicking a malicious link, which 1. Research reports on fraud suggest
leads to the installation of malware that that generally, senior citizens are more
results in freezing of the system or revealing vulnerable to scams than any other group.
of sensitive information. It could then The thinking behind this is that older
result in these unauthorized purchases, the people can be confused easily. Hence,
stealing of funds, or identify theft. these fraudsters tend to babble and aim to
Scammers are opportunists by nature, confuse their victims, so the real trick is if
and the most recent trends observed in this someone is trying to rush you, that’s a cue
direction are about they taking advantage of for you to back off. Also remember, there
COVID19 and seeing this as an opportunity is a significant amount of money sitting in
to steal more! The virus has affected the lives senior citizens’ accounts, and they are on
of millions of people around the world. It’s fraudsters’ ‘watch list’.
impossible to predict its long-term impact. 2. Shred all your credit card receipts: Identity
But for sure, it is possible to take steps to theft is a huge business. Regularly monitor
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