It seems like every week we hear about another major security breach. There was the Equifax breach in 2017 that compromised the data of 143 million people and the JP Morgan Chase breach in 2014 that affected 83 million households. Then there was Anthem and Target and Uber and Home Depot. I think you get the point.
There’s almost a 100% chance you’ve been impacted by a breach and had some of your personal information compromised. Do you ever wonder what the bad guys do with all that information? Now we do.
According to the KLEW website, there is now an email phishing scam going around in which the email includes YOUR social security number. And how did the scammers most likely come by your social security number? See paragraph number one above.
“According to the Social Security Administration, the scam is fairly new with the same target of trying to steal your identity.” The threatening emails read “lawsuit will be filed on your name for your due account with us. We still can offer you a settlement of $100.00 if it is paid today.”
Apparently the scammers aren’t really trying to take you for a hundred bucks. All they really want is for you to respond to the email. Why? It takes more than just a social security number to do bad things like opening an account in your name. It requires other information about you, like your email address. By responding to the email, you are confirming that’s your email, which gives the bad guys one more piece of information to really cause you some grief.
What can you do to protect yourself? A couple of things. The first thing you should do is to put a fraud alert on your social security number and notify the three credit bureaus. “That way nobody can open a credit, or any other kind of account, without you being notified.”
The other thing you should do is to get yourself phishing protection software that protects against display name spoofing and domain name spoofing. All of these emails came from very suspicious email addresses, and if the recipient wasn’t careful, they could have very easily replied to the email without thinking. Phish protection software with spoofing protection makes sure that doesn’t happen.
When you’re ready to protect yourself from the latest social security phishing scam, head on over to our products. Try it risk free for 30 days.