Let’s Talk About Scams

Let’s talk about scams. More accurately, let’s talk about educating ourselves about scams, phishing, and Social Engineering.

At the release of the FBI’s 2023 Internet Crime report, the three most costly scams are investment scams ($4.5 Billion in losses), tech support scams ($924 Million in losses), and romance scams ($652 Million in losses). The number of criminal complaints filed for phishing is just shy of 300,000.

This affects everyone on the personal and business level.

These past two/three weeks, we’ve talked about tech support scams in detail, we gave a private training, and in passing, while explaining to a group what it is that we do, scams came up in the conversation.

Clicking that suspicious link/attachment, installing an unknown/untrusted app, answering that unsolicited call, or scanning an unknown QR code could lead to loss of funds, theft of sensitive information, unauthorized access to accounts/systems, or identity theft to name a few.

We’re at a stage these days where it’s getting difficult discerning what is legitimate or not; no thanks to A.I.

It’s more important right now to slow down before making a decision so that you can think through what you’re looking at, or listening to, especially if you’re a mobile first person. This is what gets you tangled up in a phishing attempt or a scam if you don’t think things through.

This is why we need to educate ourselves better in this digital era. And, like anything that you learn, you have to put it into practice for that knowledge to be effective.

If you’re looking for a custom training for yourself, your family, or your organization, let us know in the contact form below.

We also have our Web Digital Literacy course which you can purchase at this link. This course helps build your core skills for your daily Internet travels.

Reach out and lets talk.