Fraud happens. In fact, it happens so often that sometimes simply placing a legitimate order for a customer gets flagged and we must spend time just to get the order released.
Yesterday we received an email from a customer inquiring about an order for 72 iPad Pencils that were being shipped to a location that they were not aware of – their name on the order, their email, but the wrong address…and of course 72 iPad Pencils.
Right now, Verizon is having a large security breach for their online portal. If you use this carrier you have probably received a message stating that your online account is suspended and that you need to reset the passwords and logins. No matter what, this happens from time to time. Fact is, there are dishonest people out there looking to take advantage of others.
Here are the 3 top ways you can help prevent fraud on your account
- Don’t Talk to Strangers – Mom and Dad were right, don’t talk to strangers. Rarely will providers call you directly. If you do happen to get a call from a cell phone provider and they start asking you to verify PINs or Security Answers- don’t answer! If it is a legitimate call, there is no reason that you can’t hang up and dial back in to your providers number by simply dialing 611 from your cell phone. This is the only way to ensure that you are talking to the carrier directly.
- Create a PIN on your Account – This one might seem basic, but you would be surprised how many people and businesses don’t have a PIN on their account. When setting up your PIN make sure you don’t use something obvious. The PIN should be not easily guessed by employees.
- Don’t Use Your Generic Email Address for Communication – Time and time again when we on-board customers they’ll let us know that they got an erroneous charge, but it’s after the fact. They probably could have caught the charges (like our customer yesterday) if they had an email that was monitored hourly. Usually when a breach happens the email addresses don’t get changed and you will immediately get notified.
Like I said in the beginning, fraud happens, these steps will go a long way to protect your account. If you would like to discuss this further, or if you want to talk about security in general as it pertains to your mobility and device management policies – we would love to help!
These are good tips actually. The first tip is not something I would have thought about. That is someone using an offline method to scrape private/sensitive login information to use in an online fraud or scam. I guess if you take that one step further, someone might rummage through the office (or house) trash looking for this kind of information. After all, does anyone shred papers anymore? No, why would they? It’s all about ‘cyber’ crime. And, the weird thing is how we think the criminals are living two worlds away when in fact it might be our next door neighbor, hacking into our wifi.