Cybercrime and Email phishing attempts have been spiking in the past month with scammers taking advantage of people’s fears and desire for the latest news around COVID-19 safety and information. Now, with the IRS getting economic stimulus checks to all Americans, a new wave of scams are attempting to take advantage of unsuspecting victims.
The IRS even warned the public that stimulus check scams, fraud and identity theft attempts are looming. “History has shown that criminals take every opportunity to perpetrate a fraud on unsuspecting victims, especially when a group of people is vulnerable or in a state of need,” said IRS Criminal Investigation Chief Don Fort to Newsweek on April 13th.
Of the many scams out there, the feds are warning that people should be wary of fake checks, people contacting them via email claiming to speed up the payment process and phone scams trying to lure people out of money.
At SWICKtech, we deal primarily with cyber-attacks and email phishing attempts.
Here are three tips to help you avoid being scammed in your inbox:
Understand Who Is Sending You an Email:
Many times, scammers will purchase a domain that’s similar to a legitimate domain. For example, at SWICKtech our domain is SWICKtech.com. A scammer might buy a similar domain like SWICKtechcorp.com. So a legitimate email from SWICKtech’s marketing team would be marketing@swicktech.com, but a fake email domain might come from marketing@swicktechcorp.com
Make sure URLs to webpages you’re visiting are legitimate:
Look for the URL after https://www. The critical part will be everything after the “www.” But before the “/“. For example www.swicktech.com/blog is legitimate but www.swicktech-web/blog would be illegitimate.
Hover over a link or button to figure out where it’s going
Just because a link or button says “check your status” or “wikipedia.org” it doesn’t mean the link is going to that place. Use your mouse to hover over the link or button to figure out where the links are redirecting to.
At SWICKtech we’re helping to fight the scourge of cybercrime and phishing attempts every day. To watch more cybersecurity tutorial videos, check out swicktech.com/videos or if you have any questions for us, feel free to contact us anytime!
