“Vishing” occurs when criminals call victims on the phone and attempt to lure them into divulging personal information that can be used to commit identity theft. The name comes from “voice,” and “phishing,” which is, of course, the use of spoofed emails designed to trick targets into clicking malicious links. Instead of email, vishing generally…
The Christmas shopping season traditionally kicks off on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. This also begins a time when criminals swarm the shopping malls as well as the Internet, seeking to take advantage of holiday opportunities. When shopping in stores, keep the following in mind: Employees: Seasonal employees are more likely to steal, from…
Every U.S.-based credit card has a magnetic stripe on the back. This stripe can be read and rewritten like a rewritable burnable CD, using card burners that are easily available online. The simplicity of the magstripe’s design, coupled with the availability of card reading and writing technology, results in billions of dollars in theft and…
The latest ATM scam is so brilliantly simple, it’s hard to believe that it actually works. Apparently, banks’ fraud detection systems are unable to flag nearly simultaneous transactions from the same account. This leaves bank customers vulnerable to what’s been termed a “flash attack,” in which multiple scanners use a stolen debit card number to…
Who better to tell you how to protect your home than a career criminal that began breaking into homes at the tender age of 14. Up until he was finally jailed, he fed a heroin addiction for almost 30 years by breaking into over 200 homes. That’s an average of breaking into one home every…
We have all encountered a sales clerk who was rude, a customer service representative who was incompetent and an online purchase that went south. Even I’ve been scammed out of an entire order and spent dozens of hours trying to get a return on another. But when it comes to outrageous and shocking, including threats…
Criminals share the same calendar as you and I. Their lives are no different than ours. They anticipate the holidays and feel the same pressures to provide. But they “shop” in a different way than we do. I’m already seeing news reports of “Woman attacked while shopping” and “Teens jump man leaving jewelry store” The…
At one time everyone lived in the city, that’s all there was. Then suburban growth began and those who had money left the city for the suburbs. City inhabitants left back were often poor and where there is poor there seems to be crime. There are many obvious differences between suburbia and city life including…
For the past five years, Cyber Monday has been the marketing term for the Monday immediately following Black Friday. It is now one of the biggest online shopping days of the year, with 77% of online retailers reporting substantially increased sales. Scammers seek to take advantage of seasonal opportunities like Cyber Monday, so beware of…
Most major websites now install cookies on your computer, which track what you do online. Over time, these cookies develop a profile, which becomes your digital fingerprint, to a certain extent. You may have noticed after searching for a specific product, advertisements for that particular product or brand appearing on various other websites you visit.…
