Security

Elderly Americans lost $12.5 billion in 2024 according to the numbers released by the Federal Trade Commission. This is up from 2023's $10 billion lost to scammers by elderly Americans. And that number is astronomically higher than 2020's $3.5 billion lost by elderly Americans. There are two questions that need to be asked: 1. What can be done to prevent these scams? 2. What can you, as friends and family, do help after someone has fallen victim to a scam?

How to Prevent Scams

Prevention is the goal, but scammers are professional social engineers so if they successfully make contact with an elderly person chances are they will have a way to get them to do what they want. So true prevention can only be accomplished by completely removing potential access between the scammers and potential victims. And to that end I can't imagine someone wanting giving up their Internet, cell phones or even home phones for those that still have a home phone line, but that would be the only way to truly prevent any access from these types of scammers.

So then what's Plan B? Remarkedly like our parents told us over and over when we were kids, we now need to remind them over and over again to never call a phone number that pops up on your computer, never allow anyone to access your computer remotely (I used to say unless you know them or can walk into the company's office and meet the staff, but more and more scammers are pretending to be those local companies so I can no longer provide this exception), and do not answer calls from unknown numbers.

Once the scammers have the elderly on the phone they have a repertoire of ways to bend the victim to their will. The first way the scammer has to get the elderly to be compliant is care and compassion. "Oh yes it's good you called, that popup means your computer is badly infected. Give me access to your computer and I'll help you." OMG he's so nice he's going to get this horrible virus off my computer... but in reality he's going to steal your credentials, get into your bank accounts, and try and bleed you dry. If care and compassion aren't working they usually go next to fear. "Oh if you don't let me on your computer we can't stop the bad people from using that virus to steal all of your money." Don't you mean you need on my computer so you can be the bad guy to do that? Fear of financial loss is very effective to convince the elderly to be compliant.

Another frequent scam right now is the fake Paypal / eBay / iTunes / etc invoice. There's always a number to call to get that straightened out and that call will take you to someone very "helpful". A person who for some bizarre reason needs access remotely to your computer, but ok he's helping...right?  Wrong! In this scam you will be asked to log into your bank account while he's on the computer with you...only he will be stealing your banking credentials (and any other credentials he can, especially your email so he can cut you off from seeing all the things he's about to do). Then in a long story short he will "accidentally" refund you too much money and so he doesn't get fired now you have to get gift cards or Bitcoin or something to get the extra money back to him so he's not fired. He's so scared of being fired!!! And you wouldn't want his "innocent" mistake to cost him his job, would you?

Usually it goes down like this, he's now showing you completely fake banking information, he's asked you to confirm that you see the $600 refund he put in your account, and you say oh no I see a $6,000 refund in my account (all of this is staged) and he freaks out and begs you to do X, Y and Z to get him the $5,400 back, so he's not fired. So you start running around doing what he's asked (gift cards, Bitcoin, etc). Meanwhile you let him into your actual account which he's bleeding dry and adding insult to injury you might actually manage to buy $5,400 in gift cards give him the card number and code and you're out even more money. And boy is he grateful. When you discover the extent of the damage you are beyond devastated.

There is a variation of this that involves a phone call or email instead, calling or emailing on behalf of a grandchild, for instance, who is in need of money and of course a grandparent is going to want to help. It's always urgent enough that there is no time to call the grandchild or child to determine if there is actually an immediate danger. Getting a person frazzled is a good way to turn off the thinking part of their brain and then suggest to them how they should respond. The scammer will have very specific instructions and they will be happy to walk you through to get them the money needed... Go buy gift cards and read the information off of them, go to a Bitcoin ATM, etc. Going to the bank is less successful these days as many banks have protocols for an elderly person coming in and requesting to wire transfer a large amount of money. Bank tellers are trained to carefully ask questions to protect their customers from scams and financial loss. A simple question that they ask when it relates to a relative in mortal peril is "Oh that sounds awful what happened when you tried to reach them yourself?" So often is I didn't try, such-and-such, told me they wouldn't answer and then the banker can insist they call the person. Wise bankers have stopped untold amounts of fraud with these simple questions.

The final primary way scammers get the elderly to do what they want (they are always coming up with new ways so this is not an exhaustive list) is to verbally abuse them and demand they do certain things. This seems to be most effective on elderly women who are more likely not sure what to do when they start being demanded they do things by some stranger on the phone. Although they will employ the tactic of name calling against any woman if they think it will work. Worse because they have often done some research, or the data file on the victim already includes this information, they can use family members names and threaten to do harm to them, financial harm or release embarrassing photos, get them fired, etc, if the victim does not comply.

Considering all of these horror stories you may have gone back to considering taking away the Internet and phones to protect your family; I totally understand that. Having worked with these individuals who have been horribly scammed they might have preferred that to loosing their entire savings. 

After a Scam

Mitigating damage after a scam is very time sensitive. The first problem you run into is determining what actually happened and the extent of the damage. After someone realizes they've been scammed they will likely feel embarrassed and not want to discuss exactly what happened, but exactly what happened is what must be known to prevent further damage.

If the victim let someone on their computer remotely you must assume everything on the computer has been compromised. While the scammer was working the magic of distraction it is well within possibility that everything of value on the computer was stolen - that includes all login credentials stored in browser, tax returns, Word docs that contain your passwords, other private documents and even sometimes pictures. Pictures if they found something juicy and want to use it to get additional money out of a person or in some cases it's just because they think the person / people in the pictures are attractive. 

Steps to Take After a Scammer was on Your Computer

• Immediately change your banking password if you logged into your banking while they were on the remote session with you.
• Immediately change your email password if you logged into your email while they were on the remote session with you. (Update your password on your phone if you get mail there as well.)
• Notify your bank(s) and have them put a watch on your account(s). If there are already transactions that have been initiated hopefully you have contacted your bank fast enough to stop the transactions.
• Take your computer to a local computer company, like us, to have it cleaned and the remote software removed. Some banks are requiring proof of having your computer cleaned prior to re-authorizing online access to banking accounts.
• Now change every other password you had stored in your computer. This will be time consuming and laborious but unless you want to suddenly find you've lost access to your Facebook account, which is now actively selling Bitcoin to your friends, or your Amazon account suddenly starts making deliveries to people you've never heard of you'll want to get all of those passwords changed and 2FA enabled to an Authenticator App on your phone wherever possible.

This will be difficult and even more so for those who are older. If you can, accompany them with as much as possible, if a large sum of money is missing they will likely be feeling extremely overwhelmed and a family member or friend helping them remember all the steps they need to take will help them. Bear in my and remind them often if they are beating themselves up that this is a mistake that hits tens of thousands of people every year; the Internet comes with risks and professional con men who make a fortune annually by tricking people into giving them exactly what they want. Hopefully, much of the damage can be mitigated if you act quickly.

Part of securing your passwords is understanding how they become compromised. Two of the most frequent ways passwords are compromised is through Brute-Force attacks and data breeches. In a Brute-Force attack, hackers are using a systematic plan to check all possibilities until the correct one is found. If a hacker knows that the site requires a minimum of 8 characters and requires the use of both alphabetical and numeric characters they will start with those parameters. This is not done by hand. They write programs to do the dirty work.

So how do you defeat attacks like this? 

Starting in July a Sextortion email scam has been inundating peoples' inboxes.  Some reports show individual email boxes receiving the threatening email 2 - 3 times per day in the last couple of weeks.  For those who have visited adult websites and have a webcam either on their laptop or setup nearby, the scam feels pretty scary.  However, a critical look at the email shows it for what it is, a scam.

Stealing credentials (your logins and passwords) is an ever growing industry.  Those stealing your information are usually selling it off to other criminals who will then work to profit from it.  Imagine what someone could do, connecting your password to your email address and then attempting to access bank accounts and credit cards.  All they need is control of your email to reset passwords and setup email rules so you'll never even see those emails come through.  Even worse is when they initiate bank transfers to offshore accounts.  You never see it happen because they're in your bank account creating the transfer and in your email forwarding any messages that show what's happening while it's being authorized and sent.

That is what makes this new scam particularly dangerous.  How many of your have employees who would click on what appears to be an email order for product and thereby compromise the entire company?

“Hello we have been notified your computer is infected. I’m a Microsoft Tech calling to fix it for you.”

Sound familiar? I hope not, but it’s a scam that’s spreading and many people are being drawn in and taken every day. So much so that this kind of tech support scam has grown into a million dollar industry.

Tech support scams were first reported in 2008 and sadly, 10 years later, every day victims are being tricked into spending hundreds of dollars on non-existent computer problems.

There are two versions of this scam, the first is a call to you from a fake “Microsoft” technician. The second involves the victim calling in for “premium” tech support or product registration / activation from a dishonest company or from a pop-up that says their computer is infected.

In December 2017 an amendment was made to Rule 902 Federal Rules of Evidence, specifically relating to the process for authenticating Electronically Stored Information (ESI).  Until this amendment was passed, now included as subsections 13 and 14, litigants had to have any electronic evidence authenticated through trial testimony.  This was an expensive process.  While our company has taken on quite a bit of eDiscovery work, being asked to testify as an expert witness was rare due to the time and cost involved for litigants.

The new Subsection 14 reads:

The Ask Toolbar is possibly one of the most insidious software addons in existence. Most people find they have the Ask Toolbar and aren’t even really sure how it happened.

Now that Ask has been exploited it’s even more important to get rid of it. Most people acquire the Ask Toolbar as an addon to something they intended to download, but didn’t read the fine print and remove the check next to “Add the Search App by Ask.”

We originally published this blog on our DataBits News site in early 2014, but as it appears to be making the rounds again we want to make sure everyone has been forewarned. 

With sharing of documents becoming more and more common this phishing scam is trying to scam people on a platform many people are comfortable using and sharing information through on a daily basis.

Like most phishing scams this one arrives via email with the subject of “Documents” "Invoice" or "Tracking Information". Naturally once you look at the body of the email it tells you to click on what looks like a Google Drive link to an important document.

This is where it gets particularly scary, if you click on this link you are taken to a login page that looks exactly like every other Google login page you’ve ever seen. This “fake page is actually hosted on Google’s servers and is served over SSL, making the page even more convincing,” Nick Johnston of Symantec wrote in his blog.  Johnston continued, “The scammers have simply created a folder inside a Google Drive account, marked it as public, loaded a file there, and then used Google Drive’s preview feature to get a publicly-accessible URL to include in their messages.”

So it has a google.com URL, and it looks like a Google login.  Unfortunately many people are likely to enter their login credentials without a second thought – and just like that their credentials will be compromised.

What can you do to protect yourself?  First is to stay alert.  If an email comes to you with the subject of “Documents” or "Invoice" but you don’t know the sender there is no reason to click that link.  If an email comes to you with the subject of “Documents” or "Invoice" and you do know the sender think before opening it, would this person be sending me a document like this, even if they do send me docs do they ever just call them “documents” or "invoice"?

Second you may notice that something is slightly off with how a login is happening, for instance in this case when you click the link it asks you to sign in to a Google account.  Most Google users right now could type in gmail.com or drive.google.com and it won’t ask for your credentials.  Certain parts of Google, like the merchant login, always ask for you to re-enter your password, but most won’t.  This is a very subtle hint that not all is right with this link, but it is one you might pick up on.

Johnston went on to say, “Google accounts are a valuable target for phishers, as they can be used to access many services…”  Not only will they now have access to your Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Merchant accounts, they will have access to what is becoming more and more important in the land of cyber crime and phishing scams – access to the contact list associated with your email address!

Why is that connection so important and valuable?  It’s simple, people are getting more wary of emails with links and attachments that come from Jane Smith, but if that email is from an old college friend or a neighbor down the block, you're more likely to click on the link or attachment it contains.  Compromised contact lists are becoming a hot commodity to really increase the effectiveness of phishing scams, generally referred to as spear phishing as they are now aiming for a specific person or group of people connected to the compromised account.

What can you do to make sure your account stays secure.  Be careful with any link or attachment that arrives via email.  Don’t feel embarrassed about contacting a sender to make sure the email you’ve received is legitimate, it’s always better to ask than have your information stolen.  And make sure you have taken steps to secure your password and that it’s not “password”.  If that seems too obvious keep in mind in 2013 when Facebook accounts were hacked the most common password exposed was “password”.

To learn more about securing your password read here.

Tech support scammers are always working to create the next great financial windfall for themselves.  These scams can arrive on your screen as fake popups from Apple, Paypal, Microsoft, your Internet Service Provider, basically anything that the scammers think you'll find believable.

In an effort to educate our readers on the variety of ways tech support scams might appear on their screens, we're providing a series of screenshots illustrating some of the different scams.

We'll start with a couple of examples of Apple specific scams.  This one even sort of has the Apple logo.