INDIANAPOLIS — Cybersecurity experts have warnings for people about online scams, including several targeting grandparents. 13News talked with the Center for Internet Security to learn about romance scams.
"It's at the top of the list of scams targeted to our senior community," CIS Vice President James Globe said. "It's where you have a criminal posing as a person of romantic interest to our senior population on various dating sites. Their end goal is to extort money by creating an urgency-type scenario or an emergency-type of scenario or something harmful that will make this senior want to provide some type of financial money, gift card, credit card information of that type. It always comes down to them trying to extort money from the potential victim."
That romance scam was at the center of a catfishing scheme that used photos of 13News anchor Scott Swan.
Globe warned that cyberthieves are profiling victims before they make contact.
"Limit the personal information you put out on these dating sites," Globe said. "Limit that to people you trust and know, so you don't have to make it publicly available."
Financial scams continue to exist online.
"Criminals are posing as popular retailers like Amazon, Target, and they're claiming you underpaid or overpaid," Globe said. "They're guessing a lot of times. They don't know if you actually purchased something but more than likely because it's this time of year, you're making a lot of purchases."
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Cybersecurity experts say thieves are targeting potential victims with tech scams.
"They're also posing to be technical support people, saying, 'We've noticed a problem with your internet connection' to gain or extort financial money out of you or get personal information from you," Globe said. "What we're telling our seniors is pause, don't react immediately. We want you to hang up, then go to the last known bill or trusted information you have about a retailer and use that to contact the retailer. Don't rely on the person who's giving you a sense of urgency or emergency that you need to do something. Always stop, pause, hang up and go back to the last known trusted information so you can contact the retailer."
CIS provides this list of tips to avoid becoming a victim of scams:
- Think first. Cybercriminals will use a sense of urgency to get victims to act before stopping to think.
- Do not accept friend requests from strangers on social media, and don’t give out personal information online.
- Don’t click on links or open attachments from someone you don’t know.
- Use anti-virus software, and regularly install updates on all devices, including phones.
- Use strong passwords with a combination of letters and numbers that can’t be easily guessed. Don’t reuse passwords. Consider a password tool that will automatically remember or generate a unique password.
- Enable multi-factor authentication. This is a two-step process that verifies who you are by sending you a text, email, or questions only you can answer.
- Report suspicious activity immediately.