Scamming 101: Techniques Hackers Use to Fool You

A picture might say a 1,000 words, but those 1,000 words are what hackers use to guess your password.

COVID has prompted a tidal wave of attacks against businesses and individuals who haven’t practiced common sense when it comes to security.

Here is a list of how hackers are getting more creative with capturing your information:

1. Social Media

At this point, we’ve all been made aware not to post when we’re out of town to inform potential robbers, but have you ever thought about online robbery?

Hackers are watching you engage with social media trends like #classof2020 #favoritethings to learn more about you – where you grew up, your high school mascot, the year you were born, and other basic facts that are commonly used in password creation.

It’s fun to tell people about what you are up to, however you need to remember that there are a lot more people interested in your what you are up to, than your friends and family.

2. Wi-Fi Scanning

Secure your home WiFi network by using a secure password, changing the admin password, updating the firmware and ensuring you are using WPA2/WPA3 as the security protocol. If you are not at home, use a VPN to browse the web or do work on the internet.. Traditionally, in public wi-fi environments, hackers would use the weak security layers of public wifi to monitor your internet behavior and steal your data.

Now that everyone is working from home, hackers have shifted to exploiting the at-home wi-fi vulnerabilities.

3. Uncommon access points

Yes- your connected LED Lighting could be putting your information at risk. Historically, in office spaces, uncommon access points exploited by hackers have been printers.

Today, that has exponentially increased in our ‘connected everything’ world. As you’re working from home – think about all the backdoors hackers might be able to get into – connected coffee machines, garage doors, doorbells, baby monitors, refrigerators, lighting, pet feeders, and the list goes on.

Not only should you do an audit to keep your home and personal information secure, but now think about the sensitive business information they might be able to get.

4. G-Suite Scams

If a hacker can include a link, you can bet they will try anything to get you to click it. Common G-suite invitations that we’ve become accustomed to, and might accidentally click if we aren’t paying attention are:

  1. Calendar invitations
  2. Google photo invites
  3. Google forms
  4. Spam in Google Drive or Storage
  5. Google Analytics Reports

Protect yourself by practicing common sense. Look twice, call a friend if you’re unsure, just don’t’ click the link 🙂

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