Online fraud is on the rise and scammers have a number of ways of targeting vulnerable individuals and businesses online. This is usually through the act of misrepresentation where a scammer will lie about who they are in order to cause you or your business a loss for their gain.
Businesses and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are particularly vulnerable to online fraud when they tend to be in a period where they are focusing on innovation, growth and business survival.
It is important to recognise that fraud can come from anywhere, and at Kwiksend we want to make sure all of our clients feel safe when they are using our services. We have compiled the following advice regarding online fraud and some simple steps which you can take in order to protect you and your business.
Knowing the signs that something might be a scam is the best way to prevent fraud from happening to you or your business in the first place. Here are some common signs that something may be a scam, or that the person you are dealing with may not be who they say they are.
Many scammers will pretend to be contacting you or your business on behalf of an official body such as the government. They may use a real name, such as the Social Security Administration or the IRS, or they may invent a name which sounds official. Other scams could come from someone pretending to be part of a business that you know or deal with, such as a tech firm, or even from a charity asking for donations. These days scammers are able to use advanced technology which can change the phone number or email address which they may use to contact you.
Scammers can come up with many different reasons for contacting you and trying to get money off you. They might say that you are in trouble with the government, that you owe money, that there is a virus on your computer or that there has been a problem with one of your accounts and you are required to send money. These requests will often ask you to verify your information, which the scammer then steals from you.
Scammers often put pressure on individuals to try and get them to act before they have time to think. This is why they often contact people on the phone, so that they don’t have time to check if the person on the other end of the call is real. They may also put pressure on you with threats such as you are going to be arrested, sued, have your driving license taken away or that your computer is about to be corrupted. They will ask for money immediately to prevent any of these ‘threats’ happening.
Scammers will ask you to pay them in specific ways, which could often be through the use of an online payment platform. That is why we request that all of our clients at Kwiksend never use our service in order to send money to someone that they do not know and trust, nor should they send money to anyone which has made them feel pressured to do so. If you are not sure who it is that has contacted you or your business asking for money, then always make sure that you double check and verify with the original source to begin with. If you have been contacted by someone that you believe is a scam, then you must report it to try and stop that scammer from targeting someone else.
