You’ve likely heard of a phishing scam, but have you ever heard of vishing? Vishing is a form of phishing that takes place on your phone. Scammers often use the personal information they gained from a previous cyber breach to try to earn your trust and steal more of your information.
Vishing and Enterprise Spoofing are on the Rise
Phone Scamming Techniques
You may be wondering how this is an effective strategy because many people avoid phone calls altogether, but scammers are working hard to gain your trust. A study conducted by First Orion in 2019 showed that over fifty percent of people ignored calls from numbers they didn’t recognize. What have scammers done to get you to answer? Instead of calling from 800 numbers they have disguised their scam calls to show up as local numbers that you are much more likely to trust and answer. These techniques have given rise to a new type of scam that is referred to as Enterprise Spoofing.
Enterprise Spoofing
What does enterprise spoofing mean? It is a trending scam technique where scammers impersonate a legitimate business. They are spoofing the main outbound calling number of well-known businesses and getting victims to answer their phones. Those that answer the scam calls are more convinced of their validity because the caller already has an abundance of their personal information like their address. The truth is that a previous data breach exposed the victim’s information and the scammers are hoping to finish connecting the dots to steal their identity. Hackers obtain vital information like product serial numbers and purchasers to turn around and target people while posing as the business they recently purchased from.
Avoiding Phone Scammers
The best way to avoid phone scammers is to screen your calls. Your telephone provider likely has a system in place that warns you of a pending phone call. Don’t bother answering! If you do happen to end up talking on the phone and realize it is a spam call it is likely because the scammer is using caller ID spoofing to look like a trusted number. Hang up immediately if the caller sounds like a robot. Robocalls are a scamming technique that is also on the rise.
Scammers are doubling down and attempting to increase their credibility by using local numbers to get you on the phone and then leveraging your personal information to keep you talking. Don’t be a victim, stay up to date about scammers’ techniques here on the TEK Utah website. We work around the clock to keep your business and personal information safe on the internet. Don’t forget that TEK Utah offers free IT assessments! Just fill out our form.