Protect yourself from the latest internet scam

The internet scam, phishing, is now becoming more widely known among the general public. However the newest scam you should be aware of is "vishing". "Vishing" comes from the combination of voice and phishing as the scams work by stealing information from consumers and businesses by using the telephone network.

This fraud scheme works by using a technique called ID spoofing. The criminals will call using this technology to make it look like the call is coming from a phone number you known or a legitimate number. The scam is working very well for fraudsters for two reasons. Firstly because the scheme is fairly new and not heard of by many people and secondly because people trust the phone services and the caller ID system. The technique is similar to email spoofing, which makes the e-mail look like it is coming from a trusted origin.

The way the scam makes money is by playing a recorded message to the user and asks them to call back on a free phone number. When they call back the user is asked to enter their credit card number or other personal information and then boom the scam rip off happens.

Of course many people are smart enough to not enter their personal of financial information but there are still thousands if not millions that will be duped into the scam.

The scariest part of "vishing" is that with voice over IP technology, the caller ID spoofing is very easy for anyone to do, never mind those behind fraud schemes. With landlines the phone network works by connecting one circuit to another with each circuit being issued a phone number by the phone company. Therefore while it is possible to change the phone number it is more difficult than VOIP. However with VOIP the service will assign devices IP addresses instead of phone numbers. The actual phone numbers are assigned by the users themselves.

Therefore I felt the need to write an article about this latest scam making its rounds as it is very lethal. I've read many horror stories already so hopefully this article will get seen by many and stop them being victims of this scam.

If you have a business learn about the latest scams and how you can protect your business by attending the next marcus evans scam conference.