Keeping a vigilant eye out for impersonation scams
Impersonation scam – a growing type of fraud
Scams are nothing new. But they are a constant threat to our identity and personal finances that we have to be vigilantly keeping an eye out for.
Unfortunately, with the ongoing pandemic, we have seen a rise in new scams as criminals swiftly adapt and evolve their methods to take advantage of the increase in remote working with people spending more time online and communicating more by email.
Fraudsters continue to target individual’s email accounts either to obtain personal information for further social engineering or to impersonate that individual.
Impersonation scams saw the biggest increase of any scam type, almost doubling in 2020 compared to 2019. Typically, such deception and impersonation scams involve the criminal posing as a genuine individual or organisation and contacting the victim.
Scam Originating from Emails
There has been an increase in the number of fraudulent attempts that originate from clients’ personal email accounts and computers being compromised. Over the last year Transact, one of the investment platforms we work with, has identified an increase in the following types of fraud:
1. A client’s email is compromised. The fraudster impersonates the client by contacting the client’s adviser about withdrawals and attempt to divert the money to their own bank account.
2. An adviser’s email is compromised. The fraudster impersonates the adviser by sending the client their own bank account details but presenting them as the Transact bank account details.
How to avoid scams
To help you avoid these new email scams, we have put together a list of things you should think about when reading a new email.
proceed with caution when opening an email with a request from what looks like an email from the team here at MFP. If you are unsure if an email has come from us, verbally confirming is often the most secure method to validate it. Give us a call on 01425 279212.
ask yourself “Is this activity un-characteristic, written badly or simply odd?”
check email trails. Fraudsters tend to use old emails and change the subject in order to obtain information.
always check the email address, fraudsters will often setup fake accounts with very similar email addresses.
be cautious of any links or documents sent via email.
report any fake or suspicious websites to us so that we can report it to our regulatory board.
do not send any bank account details or other similar information in the body of emails (as these can be redirected and modified if the fraudster has hacked into the client’s email account).
As you know, we use a secure document sharing facility for sharing any sensitive information. We believe this to be the most secure method of transferring sensitive data.
If you are ever unsure about an email that has been sent to you, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are always happy to talk it through to put your mind at rest.
Podcasts on scams
You may like to take a listen to a couple of interesting podcasts on the topic of scams from The Retirement Café podcast by following the links below:
Episode 65: Protecting the vulnerable from scams and financial fraud